


Intricate

by 79AuRa88



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: ACD Canon References, Canon Rewrite, Canon-Typical Violence, Casual Sex, Demisexual Sherlock, F/F, F/M, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Major Original Character(s), Originally Posted on FanFiction.Net, Sexual Experimentation, Slow Build, Slow Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-23
Updated: 2015-03-09
Packaged: 2018-02-26 16:39:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 25,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2658968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/79AuRa88/pseuds/79AuRa88
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her life was relatively- painfully- ordinary, until her cousin found a new flatmate, and said flatmate's older brother paid her to move into 221C Baker Street.</p><p>A canon rewrite starting with A Study In Pink, diverging  after His Last Vow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Roseus

**Author's Note:**

> Cross-posted on FF.Net under the name C.J. Ellison, in case any of you recognise it.  
> The plotline should follow canon roughly, diverging fully after Season 3. There will be John/Mary, possibly Lestrade/Molly, hints of Mycroft/Lestrade and Mycroft/Anthea, and a dash of creepy one-sided Sherlock/Moriarty thrown into the mix, just because I can.

_roseus : roseate (bright or promising, incautiously optimistic); aural (of or like the dawn); incarnadine (of a crimson colour, or to stain with blood red)_

* * *

 

_January 30, 2010_

Sherlock Holmes was not a man to feel apprehensive often.

Apprehension was, in essence, just a milder cousin of fear, and most fears ultimately stemmed from being confronted with the unknown. Sherlock, however, lived in a world of perfect truth; no one could lie to him, no one could keep a secret from him, and the facts of everything unravelled beneath his mind in an effortless cascade of information. Nothing was _unknown_. Hence, he had nothing to fear.

At least, that was what he told himself as the black cab steadily coasted to its destination, feeling his insides twist nervously.

He glanced out of the window, at the streets rolling past. London was starkly beautiful in the winter, grey and austere, slashed with occasional colour from cars and shop windows; its skyline was cut by both ancient stone and modern steel and glass, spires and jutting roofs and domes sculpting the horizon, sulphurous fumes and the constant thrum of traffic uncoiling from concrete pavement and into bright, cold ivory skies. The clench of his stomach eased. This country and its government might belong to his brother, but London was Sherlock’s city, if only in essence: aloof, sleepless, always on the cutting edge. Just like him.

Sherlock almost felt a wash of relief when the taxi drew up to the kerb, and he saw that his potential flatmate was already there- seven o’clock sharp, as requested, perfectly on time. It was no surprise, really. The most innocuous habits were always the hardest to break, and Sherlock had found that punctuality was part of the hallmark of former military service. John Watson was five-foot-seven of wasted talent, in his opinion; a skilled doctor and solider extracted from the battlefield thanks to a single bullet, dark brass-blonde and his posture as steady and upright as a pillar, despite the aluminium cane aiding a limp caused more by the mind than the body. The stranger that Mike Stamford had bought into the laboratory of St Bartholomew’s Hospital was oddly interesting; jaded and hardened by all he had seen, his façade sturdy and almost infallibly composed thanks to his training, but damaged underneath nonetheless. Sherlock had found a rare glimmer of respect for Dr Watson.

Living with him, then, would hopefully be a breeze. That was, if all went well this evening.

John halted at the steps of the door marked _221B_ in gleaming brass letters, lifting the wrought metal knocker and rapping sharply- and Sherlock took that as his perfectly-timed cue, sliding out from the backseat of the cab.

However, it was at that very moment the he noticed her- a figure was suddenly at the doctor’s heels, as though having fallen behind and catching up. Sherlock’s eyes narrowed at the unexpected apparition. She was no older than twenty, slender, with a sheet of silken blonde hair spilling to her ribs- like some ancient Roman sculpture bought to life and redressed in twenty-first century fashion. He surmised, from John’s comfort with her sudden proximity, that she was associated with him in some way, though he couldn’t quite tell how- _yet_.

Sherlock stepped out onto the pavement, into the crisp evening air, the slight breeze ruffling his hair and unbuttoned coat. “Hello,” he said smoothly, snapping the cab door shut and handing the fare to the driver through his window.

John turned, as did the young woman he was with. “Ah, Mr Holmes.”

“Sherlock, please,” he corrected swiftly, shaking the doctor’s hand, before turning a piercing gaze on his companion. She was pretty, he noticed idly: as incarnadine, cool and delicately sparkling as a flute of rosé in the height of summer.

“My cousin,” John added, gesturing towards her by means of introduction, “Scarlett Rossini.”

Sherlock, out of politeness, offered his hand. “Sherlock Holmes." 

Her hand slipped into his, bare skin contrasted against the supple black leather of his glove.

“Pleased to meet you,” Scarlett Rossini said, the shadow of a smile at her mouth.

In the few seconds that followed, Sherlock performed a swift visual scan, an analysis rapidly forming. _Cousin_ , John had said- Sherlock had assumed up until that very moment that John was not close to his extended family by any stretch of the imagination, so therefore _Scarlett_ must be a highly notable exception. Her opinion must matter to John, especially if he had bought her with him today. Sherlock would have to find a way to get on her good side, and quickly. 

He swept his gaze over her, drinking in the details. She was darkly dressed, stylish yet sturdy. A closely-tailored black coat skimmed just below her hips ( _high-collared, double breasted, military-style epaulets and heavy silver buttons_ ) coupled with dark-wash jeans ( _ochre-yellow stitching on the outside vertical seam, small wear in the left knee_ ) and ankle boots ( _well-worn, rather pretty, yet formidable, with a thick three-inch_ _heel_ ). The tongue of yellow and black ribbon at the back of the heel identified the brand as Doc Martens, renowned for producing footwear capable withstanding years of abuse and still remaining absurdly comfortable. She wore no jewellery, or at least none that he could see. So, she was practical, but not above the call of fashion. Her hair was natural both in colour and style, left loose about her shoulders, and she wore almost no makeup- a glossy smudge of raspberry lip balm, black eyeliner that contrasted sharply with the light colour of her hair- all suggesting a lack of vanity. In that case, her slim figure was most likely due to a hobby rather than deliberate maintenance: ballet or gymnastics, judging by the unconscious grace of her movements. And she was quite obviously a university student. Everything about her, from her age to their location, attested to it, confirmed by the durable messenger bag slung over one shoulder, burdened with two- no, _three_ \- heavy tomes, the outline of their corners just visible as they pressed against the thick fabric. From his overall first impression, he would guess that she was taking a science or mathematical degree. Sherlock reconsidered the wear in her jeans- small, no bigger in diameter than the head of a pin, neat and clean without any visible scorching or fraying- an accidental chemical burn, perhaps. She was Chemistry student, then- most likely.

Sherlock released her hand, filing the information away in his memory palace, tucking it inside his temporary dossier on John. He would appeal to her intelligence, impress her with his own- perhaps flirt, subtly. Many were under the false impression that, because he did not bother to employ it very often, that he had absolutely no concept of charm. How very wrong they were. However, he would have to be careful not to trip off John’s protective instincts- which he no doubt had, considering her age compared to his and how disarmingly attractive she was.

“Well, this is in a prime spot,” John noted, his gaze sweeping over the street. “Must be expensive.”

Sherlock caught the insinuation, and was quick to ward it off. “Mrs Hudson, the landlady, is offering me a special deal. Owes me a favour.” He was unable to stop himself from slipping in the anecdote. “A few years back, her husband got himself sentenced to death in Florida. I was able to help out.”

“Sorry, you stopped her husband from being executed?” John clarified.

“Oh no,” Sherlock said, smiling lightly, “I _ensured_ it.”

Before either the doctor or his cousin- her expression now curious and mildly amused, Sherlock noted with satisfaction- could formulate a reply, the ink-black door clicked open. On the other side, Martha Hudson, wearing a velvet dress in a rich shade of aubergine, smiled widely at him, and Sherlock returned the gesture almost instinctively.

“Sherlock,” she said warmly, hugging him the moment he was close enough. It was, perhaps, a little excessive- but his earlier announcement that he may have found a potential flatmate had left her in a persistently good mood the entire day. Sherlock was willing to admit that he tolerated precious few people- the majority of the human population were either stupid, annoying, boring, or a combination of the three, in his opinion- so the very prospect of meeting some that he was willing to share living space with had been a delight to Mrs Hudson.

Sherlock kissed her cheek, before stepping aside and indicating the two figures outside the door. “Mrs Hudson- Dr John Watson and Scarlett Rossini.”

“Hello,” she greeted the guests with equal enthusiasm, inviting them inside with a beaming smile. “Come in.”

The three slid past her and into the hallway as she stood aside, closing the door behind them. “Shall we?” Sherlock suggested immediately, and without waiting for much of a reply, quickly led the way up the staircase. The cousins followed- Scarlett first, fingertips skimming over the walnut banister- and John second, keeping a stubbornly brisk yet struggling pace with the use of his cane. Sherlock paused, waiting until they had both made it to the landing before opening the door and stepping inside. 

The flat was in a state of what could only be described as tenuously controlled chaos. Almost every square inch of flat surface was dominated by boxes, assorted clutter, stacks of papers and files. The décor underneath had a hint of pseudo-Victorian era charm to it, the floor carpeted in a deep iron-oxide red, the furniture beautiful, dark, leaning towards ornate; the rows of shelves built into the walls of the living room were crammed and spilling over with books, a floor-length pair of windows facing the far wall, overlooking the street below and flooding the spacious open-plan lounge with natural light. The adjoining kitchen was more modern, the teak dining table in the centre covered in a complex system of plastic delivery tubes, condensers, bottles, glass vials, conical flasks, distillation towers- an ongoing experiment held in stasis under the hanging light above it.

Sherlock pulled off his gloves, and looked to John expectantly.

“Oh, this could be very nice,” John said, his expression slowly growing into deep approval. He glanced at Scarlett, who returned his look with a neutral smile that said both nothing and everything. “Very nice indeed.”

Sherlock released a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding. “Yes,” he said, feeling instantly lighter. “Yes, I think so- my thoughts precisely. So I went straight ahead and moved-”

“- as soon as we get this rubbish cleaned out- oh.” 

They had spoken simultaneously. As soon as they each realised what the other had said, an awkward silence permeated the room.

Sherlock felt a hot flash of embarrassment lance through him, the tension in his stomach returning with a vengeance. Pivoting on his heel, self-conscious and uncharacteristically flustered, he immediately turned towards the closest batch of notes left scattered over an end table.

“S-so this is all, uh-”

“Well, obviously I can, um- _ahem_ \- straighten things up… a bit.” With his back turned and focused on throwing a handful of files haphazardly into the closest box, Sherlock didn’t see Scarlett knock the heel of her boot against John’s ankle reproachfully, glaring, and John wincing in an uncomfortable admission of his monumental, if accidental, faux pas. Concluding his hasty tidying by gathering a sheaf of letters, placing them on the mantle and stabbing the stack with a stray pocketknife, Sherlock turned back towards them.

Something had seemed to have caught Scarlett’s attention. “A skull?” She asked, curiosity warming her voice. 

He glanced down it, resting innocently on the mantelpiece beside him. “Friend of mine,” he explained automatically, before remembering that it wasn’t exactly normal to refer to inanimate objects as such. “Well, I say _friend_ …”

Fortunately, Scarlett didn’t appear to be listening too intently; strands of champagne-blonde hair slipped over her shoulders as she moved closer, leaning forwards and examining the skull closely. The corner of Sherlock’s mouth twitched. She had a genuine taste for the macabre, it seemed- a refreshing trait, he had to admit. His guess was further confirmed when she lifted a hand to touch the skull, but hesitated a few centimetres short, glancing up at him in silent question.

Sherlock held out his hand in invitation. “Oh, please.”

Scarlett’s smile blossomed at his permission. The girl carefully picked up the skull, thumbs held delicately at its jaw, her touch light but secure upon the cleaned bone.

“What do you call him?” Scarlett asked as she lifted the skull until its eye sockets were level with her own, grinning back at it. “Yorick? No, wait, that’s too obvious- Ichabod?”

Sherlock, stripping off his coat and scarf, draping both over the back of a chair, threw an appreciative smile over his shoulder. “Marie Antoinette.”

Scarlett laughed delightedly, and Sherlock couldn’t help but smirk.

John, meanwhile, unnoticed by his cousin or potential flatmate, was smiling to himself. John knew better than almost anyone else on the face of the planet that Scarlett Rossini could be harder than diamond when she chose- in fact, it was arguably the reason why John got along with her better than the rest of his extended family; she preferred to keep her heart hidden up her sleeve, rather than stitched permanently upon it. But Scarlett was never anything less than compassionate, sweet to the core, and fiercely empathetic- and together with the natural charisma inherited from her mother, it culminated in a unique gift: the ability to change the atmosphere of an entire room in a single move.

For John, it was like watching her pull a thread- tension unravelling and transforming into levity without anyone realising, like an elaborate parlour trick.

“What do you think, Dr Watson?” Mrs Hudson asked warmly, joining them and snapping John out of his reverie, retrieving an empty cup and saucer from the coffee table. “There’s another bedroom upstairs, if you’ll be needing two bedrooms.”

John was openly nonplussed. “Of course we’ll be needing two…”

“Oh, don’t worry,” the landlady was quick to reassure him, “there’s all sorts ‘round here.” Her voice dropped confidentially as she left to dispose of the cup in the kitchen. “Mrs Turner next door’s got married ones.”

John looked incredulous, glancing expectantly at a deliberately oblivious Sherlock- he had heard, of course, but could have cared less about the implication- to correct her.

“Good to know,” Scarlett commented nonchalantly, setting both the skull and her bag down carefully. She drifted away into the kitchen, circling the table, idly examining the web of apparatus arranged on its surface as Mrs Hudson bemoaned the mess. Something clicked into place Sherlock’s mind as he watched Scarlett out of the corner of his eye, flipping his laptop open; her reaction to an object so closely associated with death, the fact that she was Chemistry student- she was looking into a career in forensics. No wonder John hadn’t seemed to have had any qualms about bringing her with him to see the flat: if the girl wasn’t perturbed by corpses, few other things would make her very uncomfortable by comparison.

“I looked you up on the internet last night,” John said abruptly, having collapsed into one of the newly cleared armchairs, his expression unreadable.

Sherlock turned to face him, tucking his hands into his pockets nonchalantly. “Anything interesting?”

“Found your website. _The Science of Deduction_.”

Sherlock couldn’t help but smile proudly. “What did you think?”

John shot him a sceptical look. Sherlock’s expression fell instantly, mildly hurt.

“You said you could identify a software designer by his tie, and an airline pilot by his left thumb,” John rattled off, his dubious expression remaining.

“Yes,” Sherlock said, a little stiffly. If there was anything that set him on the defensive, it was someone doubting his intellect. “And I can read your military career in your face and your leg, and your brother’s drinking habits in your mobile phone.” John’s jaw flexed slightly, a curtailed replica of his reaction in the laboratory yesterday- Sherlock had to admire his self-control- and Sherlock’s gaze flicked over to the young woman watching them from the kitchen, making eye contact unflinchingly. “And in Scarlett, I can tell her intelligence by her jeans, and her years of dancing experience simply by her gait.”

Scarlett skimmed her gaze over him, her eyes alight- the criminal forensic enthusiast Sherlock had identified in her was shining through unashamedly.

“How?” She asked serenely.

Sherlock smiled enigmatically, and turned away, adjusting a sheaf of freshly transcribed sheet music unfolded on his stand. He would hold back for the interim; people generally didn’t like to think that their personal life was being telegraphed by tiny details available to the casual, if highly attentive, observer. There was no need to make them both uncomfortable, he decided.

“What about these suicides, then, Sherlock?” Mrs Hudson said, emerging from the kitchen with the latest newspaper unfolded before her. “Thought that would be right up your street. Three exactly the same.”

“ _Four_ ,” Sherlock corrected her abruptly, moving past his music stand towards the nearest window, his heart suddenly leaping. A police patrol car had pulled up outside on the street below, bright blue and red lights swivelling on its roof. “There’s been a fourth. And there’s something different this time.”

“A _fourth_?” Mrs Hudson echoed, alarmed.

Sherlock swivelled towards the open doorway of the flat just in time to see a familiar figure climbing the stairs, his steps hasty and unhesitant, shrouded in a long sable coat. Detective Inspector Lestrade- grim, capable, with salt and pepper hair and a strong yet lined face that spoke of years of dedication and carefully honed skill; there was a good reason why Sherlock refused to work with no one in New Scotland Yard but him- swiftly entered through the open unlocked door.

“Where?” Sherlock asked, disposing of all meaningless preamble.

Lestrade halted. “Brixton, Lauriston Gardens.”

“What’s new about this one? You wouldn’t have come to get me if there wasn’t something different.”

The DI sighed, slightly breathless. “You know how they never leave notes?”

“Yes?”

“This one did,” Lestrade said, with the kind of straightforwardness only a member of the police could lay claim to. Sherlock’s interest was instantaneously sparked, though he hid it well. John and Mrs Hudson simply looked on, the former bemused, Scarlett listening in from the kitchen, unseen. “Will you come?”

Sherlock paused for a split second, his eyes narrowing. “Who’s on forensics?”

“It’s Anderson.”

He looked away immediately, grimacing in displeasure. “Anderson won’t work with me.” 

Lestrade was nigh upon exasperated. “Well, he won’t be your assistant!”

“I _need_ an assistant.”

Seeing that he was getting nowhere, Lestrade cut to the chase. “Will you come?”

“Not in a police car,” Sherlock replied coolly, turning back towards the window, “I’ll be right behind.”

Lestrade nodded, a metaphysical weight lifting off his shoulders. “Thank you,” he said. Turning to the two other individuals in the room- those that he could see, at least- he nodded again and exited as brusquely as he had entered. Sherlock was motionless and impassive as Lestrade left, feeling John’s questioning stare upon him, struggling against the insistent beginnings of a smile.

When the front door finally snapped closed downstairs, his façade finally cracked.

“ _Brilliant_!” Sherlock exploded, leaping up into the air, fists clenched triumphantly; he could already feel a euphoric shot of adrenaline thrumming through his veins. “Yes! _Ah_ , four serial suicides, and now a note! Oh, it’s Christmas!” Sherlock twirled across the room, retrieving and refitting himself with his coat and midnight-coloured scarf hastily. “Mrs Hudson, I’ll be late- might need some food.”

Scarlett slid out of Sherlock’s way as he reached over to pick up his small leather-bound examination kit from the table, and he smiled at her impulsively as he passed, elated by the new development on what had been an already intriguing case. “I’m your landlady, dear,” Mrs Hudson was saying sternly, unperturbed by his sudden mood shift, “not your housekeeper.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes emphatically at the wall. “Something cold will do. John- Scarlett- have a cup of tea, make yourselves at home.” He tore open the door, the slab of carved wood swinging violently on its brass hinges. “Don’t wait up!” 

With that, he was slamming the door shut behind him, almost sprinting down the stairs. Today was a _good_ day, Sherlock decided exultantly, pausing only to slip his kit into the deep outer pocket of his coat. A _fantastic_ day. New case, new flatmate- his mind was already deliciously occupied, turning over countless possibilities and undiscovered solutions to another puzzle.

It was just as he was about to stride briskly out of 221 Baker Street when he heard a short, sharp shout from upstairs.

Sherlock froze.

His mind whirred like silver clockwork. John Watson, army doctor, invalided home. Hyperaware. Frustrated by a lack of venture, no doubt; the sudden monotony of civilian life must seem so grey in comparison to the high-stress realm he had been forced from, and the commonplace sympathy for his situation so grating. And it looked as though they were going to be coexisting in the same space very soon. Sherlock certainly thought it would be a bearable arrangement, at the least.

John and his expertise could be of use to him.

And Scarlett; Scarlett was important to John, that much was clear. She was interested in forensics. She was intelligent. Her input could be of value, potentially, and the gratitude Sherlock would receive from her for providing rare and much-envied experience for her career could go towards a good opinion of him. If Scarlett liked him, it would be that much easier to secure John as a flatmate.

Sherlock closed the door decisively, and turned to walk back up the stairs.

Silently stepping back into the open threshold, Sherlock saw that John was still seated in the dusty red armchair, Scarlett hovering behind him, reading the newspaper over his shoulder. “You’re a doctor,” Sherlock murmured musingly, pulling on his gloves. John started, looking up at him. “In fact, you’re an army doctor.”

John, realising that the statement was directed at him, rose to his feet with less difficulty than might have been expected, even with his cane. His psychosomatic limp was already diminishing, Sherlock realised; if John kept up this pace, he calculated that he could erase it completely by the end of the night.

“Yes.”

“Any good?” Sherlock asked, conscious of Scarlett’s gaze locked on him cautiously.

“ _Very_ good,” John said, confident but without arrogance.

Sherlock believed him. “Seen a lot of injuries, then?” He pushed further, stepping closer. “Violent deaths?”

“Well- yes.”

Sherlock’s tone softened slightly, realising that he was about to probe close to a rather raw nerve. “Bit of trouble too, I’ll bet.”

John’s chin lifted slightly, unyielding. Sherlock’s opinion of him spiked, only solidifying his resolve.

“Yes, of course. Enough for a lifetime- far too much.”

Sherlock stared into him for a moment, holding back a smile.

“Want to see some more?”

John’s reply was immediate and zealous. “Oh God, yes.”

Sherlock immediately turned and strode out of the flat once again, immensely pleased, this time with John close at his heels. He was already out on the landing before he remembered the second part of his decision and, swivelling around, ducked back into the flat briefly.

“Scarlett,” he said sharply. The blonde turned to look at him, surprised, brushing her fringe away from her face. “You may as well join us. With your career aims in forensics, I’m sure you would find it valuable.”

Sherlock flashed his most charming smile for good measure, and winked brazenly.

Scarlett hitched a single eyebrow, replying with an amused but unaffected quirk of her mouth, and wordlessly retrieved her bag. Sherlock swept out victoriously.

“Sorry Mrs Hudson,” John cheerfully called out to 221A as they descended in a concerto of footsteps on wooden stairs. “Scarlett and I will have to skip the tea. Off out.”

“All three of you?” Mrs Hudson said in amazement, appearing in the hallway from her own flat. Sherlock turned to her, grinning unashamedly.

“Impossible suicides? Four of them?” He grasped her shoulders. “There’s no point sitting at home when there’s finally something _fun_ going on!” 

He kissed her cheek exuberantly, and Mrs Hudson batted him away. “Look at you, all happy,” she said, pursing her lips, her expression instead more exasperatedly fond than genuinely reproving. “It’s not decent. Oh, go on…”

“Who cares about _decent_?” Sherlock hissed through his teeth, almost sprinting towards the door, his new acquaintances in tow. “The game, Mrs Hudson, is _on_!”

 

* * *

 

 The taxi ride was fraught with a strangely peaceful flavour of tension. The luminous reflections of streetlamps passed over the dark glass of the windows, other cars traversing parallel lanes in a brief vehement glare of headlights, scarlet double-decker buses prowling the main streets on their usual routes, studded with orange lights and their interiors glowing uncannily. Sherlock was focused on his smartphone, reviewing the details of the serial suicides released to the media. John sat beside him in silence, his sideways glances at Sherlock admirably patient, with Scarlett seated opposite them both and apparently more interested in her view from the passenger window than anything else.

Eventually, Sherlock lowered his phone. “Okay, you’ve got questions.”

“Yeah,” John said in a flat tone, “ _where_ are we going?”

Sherlock glanced at him in profound boredom. “Crime scene. Next.”

A message alert chimed through the backseat of the taxi. Scarlett flipped out her phone- a sleek, cherry-red device with touchscreen interface and a solitary sterling silver diamante charm, wrought into the shape of her initials, hanging from it. The model was sophisticated, a year old, yet in very good condition; _wealthy parent or guardian_ , Sherlock deduced automatically. Her sense of independence meant refusal of their financial assistance, however, and good treatment of her few luxury items, not unlike her cousin.

“Who are you?” John said bluntly as Scarlett read the text swiftly, ignored it and replaced her phone. “What do you do?”

“What do you think?” Sherlock replied challengingly, testing the limits of the doctor’s intelligence.

“I’d say… private detective…” John began tenuously.

“But?”

“The police don’t go to private detectives,” he concluded.

Sherlock smirked, pleased that John was successfully keeping pace. “I’m a consulting detective,” he said smoothly. “The only one in the world. I invented the job. It means that when the police are out of their depth, which is always, they consult me.”

John’s response was almost laughing. “The police don’t consult amateurs!”

Sherlock felt his entire body tighten, his nerve endings crackling with indignation.

The comment had unknowingly dealt a disproportionately harsh blow to Sherlock’s pride, especially considering that it had been delivered with more casual incredulity than genuine malice; but pride was pride, and Sherlock Holmes’ was founded deeply- almost exclusively, although he would never admit to it in so many words- in his own intellect. Regardless of what anyone said of him, regardless of how they tried to criticise him, he knew that one certain fact- his personal _cogito_ \- was that he was remarkably, indisputably _clever_.

He glanced at John sharply, keeping his expression carefully neutral, and looked away.

“When I met you for the first time yesterday, I said _Afghanistan or Iraq_. You looked surprised.”

“Yes, how _did_ you know about that?”

“I didn’t know. I saw.” Although he knew he might come to regret it on only a few minutes, Sherlock simply could not help himself- his pride was wounded. He inhaled, and swiftly launched into the details of the deduction he had made within less than a few collective seconds upon meeting John Watson in the chemical analysis laboratory of St Bartholomew’s Hospital. “Your haircut and the way you hold yourself says _military_ , but your conversation as you entered the room said _trained at Bart’s_ \- so, army doctor. Obvious. Your face is tanned- but no tan above the wrists. You’ve been abroad, but not sunbathing. You limp’s really bad when you walk, but you don’t ask for a chair when you stand, like you’ve forgotten about it, so it’s at least partly psychosomatic. That says that the original circumstances of the injury were traumatic; wounded in action, then. Wounded in action, suntan,” Sherlock lifted his chin, concluding crisply, “ _Afghanistan or Iraq._ ”

He clicked his final consonant curtly, and awaited John’s reply.

“You said I had a therapist.”

“You’ve got a psychosomatic limp; of course you’ve got a therapist,” Sherlock said dispassionately, pleased to see that John had abandoned all outward signs of amusement. “Then there’s your brother,” he continued. “Your phone: it’s expensive, email enabled, MP3 player. If you’re looking for a flat-share, you wouldn’t waste money on this- it’s a gift, then. Scratches: not one, but many over time- it’s been in the same pocket as keys and coins. The man sitting next to me wouldn’t treat his one luxury item like this- so, it’s had a previous owner. The next bit is easy: you know it already.”

John’s eyes gleamed with realisation. “The engraving.”

“ _Harry Watson_ ,” Sherlock quoted from memory. “Clearly a family member who has given you his old phone. Not your father; this is a young man’s gadget. It could be a cousin, but you’re a war hero who can’t find a place to live- unlikely that you have an extended family, certainly not one that you’re close to- Scarlett is the exception, not the rule. So, brother it is. Now, _Clara_ \- who’s _Clara_?” Sherlock intoned with the faintest of amused drawls, honestly beginning to enjoy himself. “Three kisses says it’s a romantic attachment; expensive phone says _wife_ not _girlfriend_. She’s also given it to him recently; this model is only six months old. Marriage in trouble, then. Six months old, and he’s just given it away? If _she_ had left _him_ , he would have kept it. People do- sentiment. But _no_ , he wanted rid of it- _he_ left _her_.”

Sherlock finally paused for a short breath. “He gave the phone to you- that says he wants you to stay in touch. You’re looking for cheap accommodation- yet you’re not going to your brother for help? That says you’ve got problems with him. Maybe you liked his wife; maybe you don’t like his drinking.”

“How,” John interrupted, “can you _possibly_ know about the drinking?”

Sherlock grinned wickedly. “Shot in the dark,” he admitted. “Good one, though. Power connection: tiny little scuff marks around the edge of it. Every night he goes to plug it in to charge, but his hands are shaking. You’d never see those marks on a sober man’s phone, never see a drunk’s without them. There you go- you see? You were right,” he finished without breaking stride.

“ _I_ was right?” John echoed disbelievingly. “Right about what?”

His voice was almost bored, but he felt a ripple of satisfaction suffuse through him. “ _The police don’t consult amateurs_.”

And with that, Sherlock bit down on his tongue and silently waited for the usual response: acrimony and bitter, instant distancing.

“That was brilliant.”

He almost started at the quiet crystalline remark, the voice emanating from directly opposite him. Sherlock had completely forgotten about Scarlett’s presence; and, looking up, he was taken off guard to find her expression remarkably soft for someone whose cousin’s personal life and most sensitive family conflicts he had just mercilessly deconstructed. On the contrary- a captivated and utterly admiring smile was coiling at her mouth, her gaze open and candid, containing genuine warmth.

Sherlock was momentarily lost for words.

“Do you think so?”

“Of course it was,” John cut in with hearty agreement, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. “It was extraordinary, it was _quite_ extraordinary.”

Sherlock felt a second flourish of pride seeping up inside him at the realisation that neither John nor Scarlett were offended or deterred by his ruthless demonstration- this time, the feeling was combined with something slightly heated and liquescent, and almost unfamiliar.

“That’s not what people normally say,” he muttered, half to himself.

“What do people normally say?” John asked.

“ _Piss off_ ,” Sherlock quoted with a dry smile. John grinned slightly, and the atmosphere lifted.

“Somehow, I believe that. You’re not exactly- _subtle_ , Mr Holmes,” Scarlett criticised, her smile becoming wry. Sherlock returned the look, unoffended; in his deductions, subtlety’s only place was in the nuances of his reasoning and the evidence before him. “Then again- in my experience, people tend to reject out of hand whatever doesn’t fit in with their personal standards of _normal_ anyway,” she continued thoughtfully. “They don’t like what they can’t comprehend. It’s a shame. Plenty of revolutionary minds are outcasts for most of their lives, because of something as ridiculous as petty jealousy. Isolation might drive them to excel, but most people won’t feel truly comfortable in who they are until they feel accepted, if only by a handful of close friends.”

Sherlock raked his gaze over her curiously, processing her words. “How very astute,” he commented lightly, “apart from your last statement, of course. There are many great minds who could care less about social acceptance. They only need recognition for their ability- nothing more.”

Scarlett rested her jaw upon the heel of her hand, her elbow propped up against the ledge of the passenger side door. “Speaking from personal experience?”

“As a matter of fact,” Sherlock said, turning to look out his window, “yes. I cannot understand why people crave _approval_ from each other. Why bother living up to someone else’s expectations?”

“So it means nothing to you- other people’s opinions of you.”

“Precisely.”

There was brief pause.

“ _Liar_.”

The word was uttered so softly that it could have easily been lost under the deep crackling hum of the cab’s engine, yet simultaneously with a strange kind of force. The two syllables held a knowing quality, unspoken empathy, designed so that Sherlock could ignore it if he wanted to- but still he turned to her with an acidic retort already on his tongue.

It was then that, for the first time, he noticed it.

Scarlett Rossini’s eyes _cut_.

Almond-shaped, lashed with long brushstrokes of dark bronze, irises of clear silver-grey- it seemed impossible, but they could only be described as the colour of a mirror: Sherlock could actually _see_ his own reflection in them, flickering like a zoetrope under the passing lights. They were by far her most striking feature- the conventional look invoked by pale golden hair and a vaguely Mediterranean bone structure was ruined in a heartbeat, soft bland prettiness permanently replaced by something with a beautiful, striking _edge_.

Sherlock stared, silent and fascinated.

Before he realised it, the moment for response passed. With an unobtrusive smile, Scarlett turned away, and the interior of the taxi sank back into silence.

Sherlock leaned back in his seat, and made a note in the temporary file he had created for the doctor and his cousin, until he could locate an appropriate room in his mind palace to store them: _Scarlett Rossini, Dr John Watson’s cousin. Possible Italian heritage. Chemistry student. Forensics career aim. Dancing experience. Well-read. Intelligent. Hard to unsettle._

_Possibly interesting._


	2. Cadaver Vestitus Rosea

_cadaver vestitus rosea : the corpse dressed in pink_

* * *

 

The street was unremarkable, almost indistinguishable from the countless other narrow, residential side-roads tracking like capillaries throughout the heart of London. Wide enough for two cars to pass abreast, each side was faced with a row of white terraced houses, coats of paint layered upon each other flaking away from the around the doors and window frames; scaffolding clung to their exterior in towers, haphazardly trimmed hedges and low brick walls and spiked wrought-iron fences separating each property from its neighbour, cars and vans pulled up against the kerb. The only aspect that made the street in any way unique was the seething aura of police presence- a compact army of officers swarmed about the area, blue and white chequered tape strung between trunks of nearby trees, lampposts and police vehicles to mark the boundaries of the crime scene. The flashing blue of the police lights cut through the cool darkness of the twilight, oscillating and sickeningly bright.

Stepping out onto the frost-glazed asphalt with a click of her heeled boots, Scarlett couldn’t help but hesitate for a moment as their taxi pulled away. She stood, gripping the strap of her bag, absorbing the sight of her first crime scene, façade slipping away for a fraction of a second. She had imagined this moment many times over, in hundreds of different circumstances, with thousands of variations of herself injected into them.

The surrealism of the moment made it impossible to fully appreciate, so Scarlett promptly gave up.

Gathering up her hair and corralling it into a swift bun, spearing it with a single black hair-stick, she hastily caught up to John and the tall, striking enigma of a man who looked set to become his flatmate- the man who walked taller than the London skyline, yet had shown genuine surprise and a snippet of insecurity when praised. Scarlett was quietly torn between jealousy and joy at the sudden appearance of Sherlock Holmes within her cousin’s restricted social sphere; living with John had been a convenient temporary arrangement for both of them, when they had happened upon each other in a nameless coffee shop only a few months ago. But, growing up, John had acted like the older brother Scarlett had always wanted. While they both hated their shared flat with an almost unnatural passion, it had taken them coexisting in that bleak bedsit for Scarlett to realise just how much she had missed him during the years of his deployment and lost contact.

Scarlett glanced across at Sherlock’s profile, visually scanning him for the nth time that evening. He was charismatic- that much she had realised from the moment John had described him, back at their current flat, after she had caught him not-so-surreptitiously trying to sneak out without her noticing- handsome, in a unique, ageless way, and utterly fascinating. But despite having faith in John’s judgement, and desperately _wanting_ to like his choice of flat-mate, Scarlett forced herself to see things in a strictly pragmatic light. Though it might not seem like it to the outsider’s eye, Scarlett could tell that John had already decided that he could trust Sherlock, leaving Scarlett to play the part of the interrogator and last line of defence.

Therefore she categorically refused to be intimidated by Sherlock Holmes, despite his breathtaking intellect and inexplicable charm. If he was going to be a poor choice of flat-mate for her surrogate brother, she was determined to figure it out by the end of the night.

At times like this, Scarlett was grateful that she was a natural actress.

Nudging her thoughts aside, she tucked her hands into the pockets of her jacket, a swift snap of her head to one side flicking her fringe out of her eyes. The taut pull of each filament against her scalp made her focus sharply, honing into the conversation in front of her.

“Did I get anything wrong?” Sherlock was asking John as they walked towards the police tape.

John glanced at him before answering. “Harry and me don’t get on. Never have,” he admitted. The amicable straightforwardness in his voice reminded Scarlett of the way he spoke whenever he was tapping into his extensive medical knowledge, most often heard after she had returned from a lecture in foul mood and begged John to explain a procedure or term that she didn’t understand. “Clara and Harry split up three months ago, and they’re getting a divorce. Harry _is_ a drinker.”

“Spot on, then,” Sherlock said with a low, pleased hum, “I didn’t expect to be right about everything.”

Scarlett smothered a smile. John glanced over his shoulder at her, wordlessly giving her permission, and she declared casually, “ _Harry_ is short for _Harriet_.”

Sherlock immediately halted.

“Harry’s your sister,” he said flatly.

“Look, what exactly are Scarlett and I supposed to be doing here?” John continued.

“ _Sister_!” Sherlock hissed out in apparent disgust over the flaw in his deduction, storming onwards. Scarlett easily kept pace, smiling serenely. “There’s always something…”

“No, seriously, _what_ are we doing here?” John persisted stonily, before being cut off by an unfamiliar voice.

“Hello, freak.”

The comment instantly set Scarlett’s shoulders coiling with brittle tension. The woman who had spoken was on the other side of the police tape- tall and slender, possessing a soft cloud of tightly-coiled black hair and a complexion of fine cocoa, stylishly complimented by a pale grey jacket and black skirt just skimming above her knees. A look of contempt was fixed on her otherwise attractive face, and Scarlett’s gaze steadily hardened as she turned the remark over in her mind, examining its facets with welling violence. Noticing her dangerously tranquil expression, John shot her a half-cautioning, half-placating glance.

Scarlett bit her tongue and- _grudgingly_ \- forced her blood to cool to a simmer.

“I’m here to see Detective Inspector Lestrade,” Sherlock said, ignoring her greeting, the flashing lights mounted atop the police car next to them throwing his sculpted features into intermittent sharp relief.

“Why?”

Scarlett’s temper was appeased slightly when, this time, Sherlock’s response was slightly terser. “I was _invited_.”

“ _Why_?” The unnamed woman repeated with mounting vitriol.

“I _think_ he wants me to take a look.”

“Well, you know what I think, don’t you?”

“Always, Sally,” Sherlock replied, his voice smoother than oak-aged whiskey, ducking under the police tape in one fluid motion. He inhaled, his expression suddenly musing. “I even know you didn’t make it home last night.”

Scarlett detected a flash of panic in the woman’s eyes. She opened her mouth to reply with what was no doubt yet another scathing remark, when she noticed the cousins on the border of the police tape. “Ah- hold on- who’s this?”

“Colleagues of mine,” Sherlock replied without so much as missing a beat. “Dr Watson, Miss Rossini- Sergeant Sally Donovan. _Old friend_ ,” he added sarcastically.

“Colleagues?” Donovan repeated with a cruelly incredulous smile. “How do _you_ get colleagues? And a _female_ one?” Her gaze turned to John and Scarlett, eyes dark and glinting as molasses. “What, did he follow you two home?”

Gripping Scarlett’s wrist with a firm yet discreet gesture of mollification, John said quickly, “Would it better if we just waited-”

“ _No._ ” Sherlock’s tone broached no room for argument. Looking away from them both, he pulled the tape high above his head, waiting.

Scarlett hesitated for only a moment before slipping underneath Sherlock’s arm, the staccato _click_ of John’s cane following her, echoing the electrified stutter of her heartbeat.

Donovan snapped on her police radio, speaking into the receiver with a hiss of static. “Freak’s here. Bringing him in.”

Scarlett’s restraint cracked. “I wasn’t aware that the police indulged in petty name-calling.”

Donovan turned to scoff acidly at the younger woman, but was thrown by Scarlett’s deliberately neutral smile.

Instead, she said frigidly, “Trust me, you wouldn’t be saying that if you knew him.”

“You must be an amazing judge of character if you know me so well already, Sergeant,” Scarlett said innocently, her tone mellifluously sweet, mask firmly in place. John knocked his cane against her heel surreptitiously- not unlike she had done to him at the flat, the only difference being that this time, it was more of a benevolent warning than a rebuke. Scarlett, unrepentant, kept her head high. After all, she could have easily said infinitely worse.

Teenagers could be _very_ cruel.

In the midst of her thoughts, on the periphery of her vision, Scarlett saw Sherlock glance in her direction before turning back in towards the house the police were converging upon, his greatcoat swirling in his wake.

His steps suddenly slowed, and he hummed out languorously, “Ah, Anderson. Here we are again.”

The name struck a chord of vague familiarity in Scarlett. However, it wasn’t until she was directly faced with the figure himself- dressed in a blue forensics jumpsuit, and topped by a distinctively uncreative hairstyle that was parted in the centre as though with a straight-rule- that she realised from where she knew the name.

“It’s a _crime scene_ ,” Phillip Anderson sneered, stripping off a pair of white latex gloves, his hostility matching the sergeant’s, Donovan drifting past and halting at the hem of the front gate as her colleague strode out to meet them. “I don’t want it contaminated, are we clear on that?”

“Quite clear,” Sherlock replied silkily. Anderson’s eyes darted to John suspiciously, before falling on the blonde girl next to him, who was pleading silently to the stars above that his facial recognition skills to be unusually poor for that of a criminal investigator.

The universe did her no such favours.

“ _Scarlett_?” Anderson blurted out, face slackening with shock, his sour expression sloughing away like mud. “What- Scarlett Rossini? What are you doing here? You’re- you’re not with _him_ , are you?”

A trio of stares immediately swivelled towards Scarlett, pinning her to the patch of asphalt where she stood. Discomfort calcifying in her veins, she kept her expression deliberately smooth, posture faultlessly relaxed, and forced a polite smile in Anderson’s direction.

Sherlock was the first to speak. “You know each other?” He inquired with a hint of distaste.

“We’re acquainted, yes,” Scarlett said evenly. “Mr Anderson led a forensics lecture at my university last October.”

“Ah.” Sherlock paused knowingly, eyes piercing into her. “You have my sympathies.”

Scarlett tried her utmost not to laugh. Regardless of whether Anderson had any authentic talent in the field of forensics, Sherlock’s blasé quip carried a lot of truth: as a lecturer, at least, Phillip Anderson was nothing but arrogance in a nutshell. After the seminar, Scarlett had been forced to stay behind and ask half a dozen questions simply to get minimal clarification on the work, and apparently that had made the man- now visibly burning up with fury and embarrassment- remember her for months later. She didn’t begrudge Sherlock saying it, either way; at the very least, not to sound immature, but Anderson and Donovan _had_ started it.

“By the way,” Sherlock said, turning back to the lead forensic investigator in question, “is your wife away for long?”

Anderson scoffed. “Oh, don’t pretend you worked that out, someone _told_ you that.”

“Your deodorant told me that.”

“My _deodorant_?”

“It’s for men,” Sherlock replied in a quirkily amused manner.

“Well, of course it’s for men!” Anderson exploded, exasperated. “I’m wearing it!”

Sherlock’s eyes flicked over his shoulder.

“So is Sergeant Donovan.”

Anderson froze, before swivelling around to look at Donovan in blatant panic. Scarlett and John exchanged a look of guilty amusement.

“Ooh, and I think it just vaporised,” Sherlock added casually. “May I go in?”

“Now, look,” Anderson interrupted, shaken and recovering hastily, “whatever you’re trying to imply-”

“I’m not implying anything,” Sherlock said with blithe dismissal, strolling straight past and soundly ignoring the seething sergeant at his right, “I’m sure Sally came around for a nice little _chat_ , and just… _happened_ to stay over.” He paused at the threshold of the house, looking back at them, voice rising deliberately. “And I assume she scrubbed your floors, going by the state of her knees.”

After a prolonged moment of mortified silence, Sherlock smirked elegantly and went inside. Scarlett and John followed mutely, unable to surpass such a brazen performance- though Scarlett internally went into hysterics when her cousin glanced down at Donovan’s knees pointedly as they passed.

The interior of the vacant property was lit by an artificial forest of industrial-strength lamps, hauled in by the police, resting atop sheets of plastic and wildly out of place in the derelict hallways. The place had clearly been abandoned for months; the once beautiful house was now nothing more than a hollow shell, stripped of wallpaper and furniture, leaving only unpolished floorboards, dusty exposed walls, and a potential that no one in Central London would make the effort to sink enough money into to fully realise.

They entered what might have been the lounge, long ago, where the police detective from earlier- DI Lestrade; the same concrete-hard, composed, professional face that had been featured in the newspaper that John had picked up idly at the flat- was waiting.

“You’ll need to wear one of these,” Sherlock told them, gesturing at a pile of sterile blue forensic suits resting on the table next to them and heading straight to a box of latex gloves on the other side. Scarlett lowered her messenger bag to rest against the table leg on the floor, and picked one up with an increasing sense of numb excitement, hearing John pull off his jacket behind her.

Lestrade, half-outfitted in his own jumpsuit, looked at them with bemusement. “Who are they?”

“They’re with me.”

“Yes, but who _are_ they?”

“I said, _they’re with me_ ,” Sherlock repeated firmly, silently daring the DI to object.

Lestrade fixed Scarlett with a searching stare, slipping his other arm into the empty sleeve. “ _Both_ of them?”

Sherlock, noticing the trajectory of his gaze, returned it with a cold glare. “Yes, _both_.”

Lestrade dropped his visual interrogation, accepting the answer, and Scarlett felt a fraction of her trepidation ebb away.

“Aren’t you going to wear one?” John asked Sherlock, breaking the silence, by nodding at the other jumpsuits, unzipping his own.

Sherlock silently shot him a sardonic hitch of an eyebrow, before turning to Lestrade.

“So where are we?”

“Upstairs.”

Once they were correctly outfitted- excluding Sherlock, who had donned only a fresh pair gloves, exchanging  black leather for white latex-the detective led them through the hall and up to the dusty spiral staircase, holding a conversation with Sherlock that Scarlett was only distantly aware of. There was a low-frequency buzzing steadily developing in her ears, insulating her, trapping her to hyperaware observations: the scrape of the old teak bannister beneath her hand, the frictionless mould of the gloves, the crackle of her jumpsuit around her, shifting beneath the deep ridged treads of her boots, shadows of disused light fixtures hanging from the cracked ceilings. She was both nervous and peculiarly calm, disturbed by her enthusiasm. The droning steadily grew louder with each step she ascended, sharpening into a constant, high whine.

The moment that they entered the guarded room on the third floor, her hearing cleared.

The four stared down at the only thing left in the otherwise empty room, unmoving and almost mismatched to the timeworn stagnant aura of the house.

It was not Scarlett’s first corpse, nor her second, or even her thirteenth. Since the middle of her first year at university she had charmed her way into a series of practical medical sessions at her university, simply for the sake of an edge in the field of forensics. She had stood, innumerable times, alongside future surgeons and doctors and pathologists in the sterility of the morgue, watching a nameless cadaver be cut open for their study. Scarlett had never once wavered, keeping a stronger stomach than many of her fellow students as she observed and took notes on the autopsies without fear or revulsion. Death came for everyone, and the aftermath did not scare her. It was just flesh and bone, after all; nothing to fear. In an abstract way, she viewed dead bodies in the same way that she viewed the empty house in which they were stood: with a hint of sadness, naturally, but ultimately concluding that time was inescapable, circumstance unpredictable, and decay inevitable. And when that happened, the past must be swept away.

Looking down at the cooling corpse calmly- that of a woman, ash-blonde, dressed in an ostentatious pink coat and matching suede heels - Scarlett wondered who she was, and why she would end her life this way.

_You’re gone, but you deserve your last words._

“Shut up.”

Scarlett started out of reverie, looking up at Sherlock and wondering if she had spoken aloud without realising. However, he was looking in completely the opposite direction, at Lestrade- who was equally as surprised.

“I didn’t say anythi-”

“You were thinking, it’s annoying.”

Lestrade cast John a look of disbelief. Sherlock, ignoring all other bodies in the room but the one without a pulse, took three slow, long strides towards the figure lifelessly outstretched in the middle of the room, his footsteps giving a hollow echo. As he halted next to the corpse, Scarlett followed his gaze, almost immediately fixed upon something near the woman’s left hand: letters, scratched out into the raw wooden floor, a faint hint of dried blood colouring the last three.

_R - a - c - h - e_

Scarlett considered the cryptic message silently, and quickly felt a sharp flare of suspicion rise in her chest.

If this woman had committed suicide- sourced the poison, like the other three, chosen a place to die without audience or possibility of interference- it seemed contrary that she would scratch out her last words in her dying moments, rather than prepare something first. Leaving no note, Scarlett could understand, perhaps. But this just seemed- intrinsically _wrong_.

She jumped slightly when she felt the warm weight of a hand on her shoulder. Scarlett turned to see John close behind her, muscle-corded torso inclined towards protectively, halfway towards steering her away from the corpse.

“You alright?” John said softly, his storm-blue eyes deepening with concern.

Scarlett nodded resolutely, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. “Yeah, fine, don’t worry,” she replied quietly, turning her attention back to the consulting detective.

Sherlock suddenly knelt next to the corpse and swiped his fingers along the back of her pink overcoat, his gloved fingertips coming away wet- and he noticed, if the slight narrowing of his eyes was any indication. Swiftly, he checked both of the coat pockets, and extracted a collapsible white umbrella. Replacing it, he dipped two fingers underneath the fold of her collar, examining the moisture he found there closely before flipping a folding magnifying glass from his pocket. Scarlett drew closer, watching in rapt fascination as Sherlock’s examination darted from the woman’s wrist, to her neck, to her ear, to her left hand- her jewellery, Scarlett realised after a moment. He slid off her gold wedding band and held it up to the light, before replacing it, the slightest of satisfied smirks creeping across his mouth.

“Got anything?” Lestrade interrupted.

Sherlock stood abruptly, removing a glove with an elastic snap. “Not much,” he said nonchalantly.

“She’s German,” a voice suddenly proclaimed from the doorway. Scarlett looked over her shoulder. Anderson cocked a smile in her direction, arms folded and leaning against the doorframe, waiting until he had the full attention of his superior and both cousins before speaking. “ _Rache_ \- German for _revenge_. She could be trying to tell us some-”

Sherlock, who had been striding indifferently in his direction since he had spoken, cut him off. “Yes, thank you for your input,” he said, slamming the door on him with a resounding bang and walking away again- and all without so much as lifting his attention from the screen of his phone. Scarlett closed her eyes and restrained a smile, simultaneously glad for and indignant on Anderson’s behalf at the unceremonious dismissal. She might not enjoy Anderson’s presence, but she wasn’t entirely sure he had deserved that.

“Then she’s German,” Lestrade said, in the voice of a veteran detective constructing a foundation for an increasingly difficult investigation.

“Of course she’s not,” Sherlock replied immediately, flipping through something on his phone. His gaze suddenly rose and locked upon that of the girl watching him, her heart starting in surprise. “Scarlett, what do you think?”

Scarlett could only return his gaze uncomprehendingly. Sherlock’s head tilted towards the prone body, and Scarlett’s shock doubled, freezing her insides like liquid nitrogen: he was offering her the opportunity to do the job she loved, and many years earlier than anyone could have anticipated.

She was on the brink of making a panicked comment about how she was nowhere near qualified enough to perform crime scene analysis forensics when Sherlock spoke again.

“I’d like your opinion, Miss Rossini. Please.”

Even as Lestrade and John looked on in sheer unadulterated surprise, Sherlock’s gaze was sincere and unmoving from Scarlett- his eyes intense, sharp, the colour of his irises akin to the clarity and colour of glacial ice.

A shiver ran through her, as though a breath of cold air had brushed against the nape of her neck, trickling down underneath the collar of her jacket and onto bare skin.

After a moment of indecision, Scarlett stepped towards the corpse, with more confidence that she felt. There was a moment of silence as she scanned the body, tucking a stray lock behind her ear.

“What do you notice?”

His attention was back upon his phone again, but Scarlett could tell by his clipped tone that Sherlock was listening closely.

“Her clothes.” Scarlett murmured, the pad of her thumb pressed to the corner of her mouth.

“Yes?”

Scarlett dropped into a kneel, less than an inch away from the dead woman, balancing easily on the balls of her feet. “Her overcoat is of a good quality- without much wear in it.” She carefully lifted the collar, nudging tangles of blonde hair aside, and examined the label of the white shirt underneath. “Silk blouse, _Vera Wang_ \- from this year’s winter collection. Matching skirt, nylons, suede heels, gold jewellery, and a professional manicure.” Scarlett stared down at the woman’s unmoving face, descending into deep thought. “Going by the overall expense and style of her clothes, my first guess would be an office worker- but not your average desk job. She’s higher up the ranks. If it was business or finance, she would have chosen a more nondescript colour, but judging by the- well, fairly lurid shade of pink- I would have to guess that it’s the kind of trade where she has to stand out. She’s attentive to her appearance, but not to the latest trends, so she doesn’t work in the fashion industry. So- media? Most likely?”

Scarlett rose to her feet in a single effortless movement.

“And she looks to be in her mid to late thirties, married, so probably with a family. There must be someone she’s connected to, someone who could shed some light on who she is and what might have happened. A high-ranking media position should… um…”

Finally noticing the stares of the detective and her cousin- one of which was dubious, the other analytical, yet accompanied by a smile of deep pride- Scarlett trailed off self-consciously.

“Help narrow the search. Um. A-a bit.”

She glanced towards Sherlock and found him gazing at her thoughtfully, irises alight with something ice-bright and invigorated. “Lestrade,” he said sharply, never breaking eye contact with Scarlett.

“Yes?”

“A word of advice. Hire this girl as soon as she leaves university. Beauty and brains are entirely too rare a combination.”

Scarlett blushed, heat suffusing through her flesh, and looked away. It was shameless flattery, and a blatant lie, but the offhand compliment still sent pleasant chills cascading down her spine.

“So she’s _right_?” Lestrade said. Scarlett was not offended by the detective’s incredulity; it had been a vague, if logic-based, guess.

“Yes, of course she’s right. Late thirties, married, works in the media industry- that’s all correct. She’s also from out of town; intended to stay in London for one night, before returning home to Cardiff. So far, so obvious- isn’t that right, Scarlett?” Sherlock finished, glancing at her with a meaningful smile, as though congratulating her.

Before Scarlett could articulate an answer, John cut in, glancing between the two of them. “Sorry- _obvious_?”

“But what about the- the message-?” Lestrade interrupted, attempting to pull the conversation back to what he no doubt viewed as the most important aspect, considering that this was the only one of the four ‘cult suicides’, as they had been dubbed by the media, where a note was left by the victim. The sole difference in a succession of suspicious deaths seemed relevant enough to Scarlett.

Apparently, Sherlock didn’t agree. “Dr Watson, what do you think?”

“Of the message?” John asked, nonplussed.

“Of the body. You’re a medical man.”

Lestrade began to protest. “We have a whole team just outside-”

“They won’t work with me.”

“I’m breaking every rule just by letting _you_ in here-”

“Yes,” Sherlock said calmly, “because you need me.”

Lestrade lifted a resigned, weary eyebrow. “Yes I do… _God help me_ ,” he added in an undertone that sounded clearly throughout the room.

“Dr Watson.” Sherlock prompted, unperturbed.

John hesitated, and looked towards Lestrade. The detective heaved a disgruntled sigh. “Oh, do what he says, help yourself,” he said, exiting the room with an annoyed slink in his steps. “Anderson, keep everyone out for a couple of minutes.”

Having been given the detective’s grudging permission, John crouched down next to the corpse, his leg held crookedly to compensate for the phantom injury, Sherlock on the opposite side. Scarlett lingered by the woman’s feet, observing the two, unnoticed.

“Well?”

“What am I doing here?” John asked for the third time that evening, this time expecting a clear answer.

“Helping me make a point.” Sherlock whispered conspiratorially.

“I’m _supposed_ to be helping you pay the rent,” John deadpanned.

“Well, this is more fun.”

“ _Fun_? There’s a woman lying _dead_.”

“Perfectly sound analysis, but I _was_ hoping you’d go deeper,” Sherlock intoned languidly, before looking up at Scarlett. “How good is your cousin at what he does?”

Scarlett had an answer prepared on her tongue the moment he asked, but feigned a moment of contemplation for the sake of making her answer appear brutally candid- which it was.

“I think that if I was hanging onto life by my fingertips, there’s no one else I’d want as my doctor.”

Apparently taking her word as unbiased truth, Sherlock turned to John and gestured towards the body expectantly. Lestrade re-entering the room behind them, John knelt with a hiss of exertion, beginning a cursory but precise examination. He bent towards the dead woman’s face, inhaling slightly, before shifting back and examining her fingernails for cyanosis. “Yep,” he announced simply. “Asphyxiation, probably. Passed out and choked on her own vomit.” Sherlock threw a triumphant expression in Lestrade’s direction. “Can’t smell any alcohol on her; could have been a seizure, possibly drugs.”

Scarlett warmed, relaxing, admiring how in his element John was, the complex analysis coming to him as easily as breathing. After several long months of helplessly watching him struggle against depression and the aching loss of the paradoxical chaos and rigid structure of the army, barely keeping his head above water- in no small part for her sake, of that she was under no illusions- seeing a flicker of the man he was beyond it was an unspeakable relief.

“You know what it was,” Sherlock said, “you’ve read the papers.”

“Well, she’s- one of the suicides. The fourth-?”

“Sherlock, _two minutes_ , I said. I need anything you’ve got,” Lestrade interrupted.

“Miss Rossini has already done half of your forensics team’s job at a single glance.” The consulting detective stood, and John echoed the motion with less elegance and the use of his cane. “Victim is in her late thirties: professional person going by her clothes, something in the media, going by the- as Scarlett so fittingly pointed out- frankly alarming shade of pink.” He paused for breath, before resuming the rapid-fire relay of his deductions. “Travelled from Cardiff today, intending to stay in London for one night- it’s obvious from the size of her suitcase.”

“Her _suitcase_?” Lestrade echoed, perplexed. Scarlett instinctively glanced around the room for the item, sweeping any dark, shadow-webbed corner that she might have missed, but found nothing.

“Suitcase, yes,” Sherlock repeated impatiently. “She’s been married for at least ten years- but not happily. She’s had a string of lovers, but none of them knew she was married.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Lestrade said, his patience wearing thin- but Scarlett caught the ghost of a smile forming at his mouth. “If you’re just making this up-!”

“Her wedding ring,” Sherlock said forcefully, pointing at her left hand. “Ten years old, at least. The rest of her jewellery has been regularly cleaned, but not her wedding ring- state of her marriage, right there. The inside of the ring is shinier than the outside- that means that it’s regularly removed; the only polishing it gets is when she works it off her finger. It’s not for work- look at her nails, she doesn’t work with her hands. So what, or rather, who does she remove her rings for? Clearly not one lover- she’d never sustain the fiction of being single over that amount of time- so more likely a string of them. Simple.”

“That’s brilliant,” John blurted out, openly awed. Sherlock stared at him blankly. “Sorry.”

“ _Cardiff_?” Lestrade asked, arms folded over his chest.

“It’s obvious, isn’t it?”

“It’s not obvious to me,” John interjected mildly.

Sherlock looked between the two men with a blend of pity and disbelief. “ _Dear God_ ,” he muttered. “What is it like in your funny little brains? It must be so _boring_.” Oblivious to the offence he had just caused in a succinct handful of words- or perhaps it had been completely deliberate, Scarlett corrected internally- he continued. “Her coat is slightly damp: she’s been in heavy rain in the last few hours. No rain anywhere in London in that time. Under her coat collar is damp too- she’s turned up against the wind. She’s got an umbrella in her left-hand pocket, but it’s dry and unused- not just wind, strong wind, too strong to use her umbrella. We know from her suitcase that she was intending to stay overnight, so she must have come a decent distance, but can’t have travelled more than two or three hours because her coat is still hasn’t dried. So,” Sherlock reached into his pocket, “where had there been heavy rain and strong wind within the radius of that travel time?”

His phone beeped obediently, and he presented the illuminated screen displaying the twenty-four hour UK weather report to Lestrade and John in turn. “ _Cardiff_.”

“Fantastic!” John said with a grin.

“Just a little,” Scarlett couldn’t help but agree, hiding an impressed smile behind her glove.

“Do you both know you do that out loud?” Sherlock asked abruptly.

“Sorry, I’ll shut up,” John said, abashed.

Sherlock observed them both strangely for a moment. “No, it’s… fine,” he murmured. Scarlett bit her lip; his flashes of social insecurity were genuine, at least, and his uncertainty in the face of high praise might be slightly- _cute_ , if the implication wasn’t so unexpectedly heart-breaking.

“Why do you keep saying _suitcase_?” Lestrade said.

“Yes- where is it?” Sherlock pivoted on his heel, his unbuttoned coat flaring out around him. “She must have had a phone or an organiser- find out who _Rachel_ is.”

“She was writing _Rachel_?”

“ _No_ ,” Sherlock’s tone dripped with saccharine sarcasm, “she was leaving an angry note in German. Of course she was writing _Rachel_! No other word it can be; question is, why did she wait until she was dying to write it?”

“That does seem inconsistent with suicide,” Scarlett was unable to abstain from voicing her earlier thoughts, now that the issue had been broached directly. “Most people don’t decide to die on a whim, they plan for months in advance, if only build up the nerve. If she went to the trouble of procuring poison _and_ finding somewhere that she would be alone without risking interruption, why not write a note beforehand?”

“A good question,” Sherlock said with feverish vigour, eyes gleaming, “and one we need an answer to.”

The detective, still preoccupied with a particular detail, redirected his questioning. “So how do you _know_ she had a suitcase?”

“Back of the right leg: tiny splash marks on the heel and calf, not present on the left.” Scarlett’s eyes were drawn to the spray of dried mud-infused water on the back of her flesh-coloured nylons. “She was dragging a wheeled suitcase behind her with her right hand; don’t get that splash-back in any other way. Smallish case, going by the spread. Case that size, woman this clothes-conscious- can only be an overnight bag, so we know she was only staying one night- now, where is it? What have you done with it?”

“There wasn’t a case.”

Sherlock, who had been kneeling to examine the marks at the back of the body’s leg once more, froze and looked up at Lestrade, eyes narrowed. “ _Say that again_.”

“There wasn’t a case, there was never any suitcase-”

The consulting detective was barely listening. “ _Suitcase_!” He called out urgently, striding out to the landing. “Did _anyone_ find a suitcase? Was there a suitcase in this house?!”

“Sherlock, _there was no case_!” The detective inspector reiterated furiously, following him out with Scarlett and John close at his heels, each confused by Sherlock’s sudden shift in mood.

Sherlock’s eyes seemed incandescent with a vivid energy as he turned back towards them. “But they take the poison themselves,” he said, voice dangerously soft and dark, growing with strength, like thunder. “They chew, swallow, the pills themselves- there are clear signs!” He turned and began racing down the staircase. “Even you lot couldn’t miss them!”

“Right, yeah, thanks,” Lestrade muttered, moving closer to the bannister. “ _And_?”

At the foot of the first set of stairs, Sherlock looked up. “It’s murder,” he declared with infallible certainty. “All of them. I don’t know how. But they’re not suicides, they’re killings, _serial_ killings.” He clapped his hands together in apparent delight, grinning like a child that had been promised a particularly rare treat, his reaction drawing astounded and disgusted stares from the forensics members nearby. “We’ve got ourselves a serial killer- I _love_ those, there’s always something to look forward to!”

“Why are you saying that?”

Sherlock paused once again on the staircase, frustration mounting at the fact that no one else could keep up with his rapidly woven thread of logic. “Her _case_! Come on, _where_ is her case? Did she _eat_ it?! Someone else was here, and they _took her case_!” He suddenly slowed, his voice low, in the midst of a revelation, his sharp eyes glazing over. “So the killer must have driven her here… forgot the case was in the car…”

“She could have- checked into a hotel, left her case there,” John attempted to reason logically.

“She never _got_ to the hotel! Look at her _hair_! The woman colour-coordinates her lipstick and her shoes, she would never leave any hotel with her hair still looking-”

Sherlock stopped abruptly, frozen.

“Oh… _oh_!” He clapped his hands together, a wild aura flaring up around him like the aurora borealis. Scarlett watched him, mentally battling to catch up; the voices of her cousin and the detective next to her became muffled as her mind cut them out of her awareness ruthlessly, subconscious deeming them unnecessary, sifting through and reorganising the details in her head, trying to align them.

“Sherlock?”

“What is it?”

“Serial killers- always hard,” Sherlock said, distracted, half to himself. “You have to wait for them to make a mistake-”

“We can’t just _wait_!” Lestrade bellowed, outraged.

“Oh, we’re done waiting!” Sherlock retorted. “Look at her, really _look_! Houston, we _have_ a mistake! Get on to Cardiff! Find out who Jennifer Wilson’s friends and family were- _find Rachel_!”

“Of course, yeah, but _what mistake_?!”

Sherlock raced back from the threshold, halting at the foot of the stairs.

“ _PINK_!”

And with a single word, Scarlett suddenly understood- like two stray wires had connected inside her brain.

“ _OH_!”

Her explosion made both John and Lestrade jump, and Sherlock returned, gazing up at her from four storeys below.

“Scarlett?” He called, a shimmer of hope in his voice.

John placed a firm, steadying hand on her upper arm, but Scarlett could barely feel it. “ _Pink_!” She repeated, lightheaded from the revelation, the words spilling out of her mangled, almost incoherent. “Th-the case- she colour matched _everything_ \- lipstick, shoes, coat, _everything_ -”

“ _Yes_!” Sherlock exploded, the smile on his face more radiant than the break of dawn, and Scarlett returned it with a soft, breathless laugh, the back of her hand pressed over her mouth. Sherlock’s gaze turned on Lestrade, furious, triumphant, as though utterly validated. “You _see_?! _She_ gets it! She gets it and she’s barely finishing her second year of uni! Scarlett, come on, come with me, quickly, get that suit off-!”

Scarlett tore away from the bannister and sprinted down the stairs at his call, her nerves glowing white-hot with exhilaration.

John yelled after her, alarmed. “ _Scarlett_!”

“Don’t worry, Dr Watson!” Sherlock said, running up to meet her and pulling her after him as she began unzipping her forensics suit. “She’s in good hands!”

“But-”

Scarlett paused breathlessly at the bottom of the staircase, stripping off the suit, a hint of rationality returning as she looked up at the faces suspended above her.

“John- sorry- have to- t-take my bag, okay? I-I’m sorry! Meet me at the flat! _I’ll text_! I promise-!”

She had barely finished her hasty farewell and kicked off the last of the coverall before a strong hand took her arm, and whisked her out into the frozen night.


	3. Fructus Laboris

_fructus laboris : the fruits of labour_

* * *

 

They had long since left the glaring lights encompassing the crime scene behind, plunging into the crushing darkness of the backstreets of Brixton, the seething stillness embroidered by the distant echoes of voices, slamming doors and the swish of cars on damp asphalt, the frigid air tasting of rain-slicked bricks and rusting iron- London at its rawest, its most visceral, the grit and rime and reality behind the sheen of glass and chrome. After a sprint that seemed to last a short eternity, the wind slashing at her exposed flesh, they finally drew to a halt at an intersection of alleyways, where Sherlock unceremoniously released her. Scarlett, breathless, rubbed her arm through her jacket, drawing a deep breath that scored her lungs clean. Watching Sherlock's lean shadow dart about her in an orbit, deep in thought, she broke the surface of her endorphin-filled haze and wondered, vaguely, whether it had been a wise idea to allow herself to be dragged away from the one person in the city she would trust with her life, and by someone she knew nothing about, apart from the fact that he investigated mysterious crimes for a living and appeared to be worthy of the overused title of _genius_.

Watching him glare up into the skies, at the rooftops hemming the view, his eyes as distant and cold as the stars, Scarlett chose to shrug the thought away as fairly irrelevant, all things considered. She was here now, and _now_ was what she had to concern herself with.

"So- the suitcase?" Scarlett ventured conversationally.

"He dumped it," the consulting detective muttered, the laconic reply confirming Scarlett's haphazard theory in three words. "But _where_? Need to narrow it down- it couldn't have taken him that long to realise- he's clever enough to get away with murder three times in a row- he knew he couldn't be seen with the case, far too conspicuous-"

"Why are you assuming that the killer is a man?" Scarlett enquired offhandedly, straightening up.

Sherlock paused and turned towards her brusquely. Even in her heeled boots, gifting her respectable stature with an extra three inches, essentially making her about the same height as John, Sherlock towered over her. Stubbornly blaming her fluttering pulse on the miniature marathon, Scarlett categorically refusing to be intimidated, meeting his eyes with a steady, expectant stare.

"Serial killer. Statistically more likely to be male."

" _Usually_ ," Scarlett reiterated. She slipped the chopstick from her hair and the knot unravelled smoothly, tresses cascading in a warm sheet down her back, insulating her rapidly escaping body heat. "Female serial killers do exist. Besides, you can only ever have statistics for the crimes you know about- maybe female serial killers are simply better at avoiding getting caught or identified." In the dim half-light from the stars, Scarlett could swear she saw the corner of Sherlock's mouth lift. "Not to mention- women are also more likely to use poison as their _modus operandi_."

Sherlock's head canted slightly to one side, weighing her words with more consideration than she had expected. "Yes, but ultimately the murderer's gender is beside the point. They had to be rid of the case; it was too noticeable, too memorable if they were seen with it. The longer they had it, the greater the chance of that became. No- they got rid of it, and quickly. Besides," he gave her an appraising look, his piercing blue gaze sweeping over her from the crown of her head to her heels; absurdly, the examination made her feel as though he was examining some ancient masterpiece on display behind a sheet of museum glass, leaving her flesh electrified, "you're a woman. Would _you_ be caught dead with a suitcase that colour? Would any woman you know, for that matter?"

"I can think of about a dozen, just off the top of my head," Scarlett said, slotting her hair stick into her jacket pocket. She mulled over her own words, and deflated slightly in realisation. "Then again, that is a pretty- _deep_ pool you're asking me to refer to."

Sherlock, as though that settled the matter, pivoted smoothly away from her. "We need a vantage point," he declared, as though the conversation had never transpired, heading down the left-hand side passageway.

"For what, exactly?" Scarlett lengthened her natural stride to keep up with the intellectual whirlwind abruptly carving a new route through the urban labyrinth, her footsteps snapping crisply.

"His dumping ground, _obviously_ ," Sherlock's voice floated back to her, edging into irritability. "Try to keep up, Scarlett; you were doing so well back at the crime scene. I _need_ that suitcase- if he made one mistake, maybe he made two- maybe we can find her mobile phone, that could lead us to Rachel- we just _need_ it, it's the next puzzle piece, can't move forward without it. We can safely assume a ten-minute driving radius as a starting point," Sherlock said, turning a half-hidden corner. "But let's start with five, shall we?"

Scarlett followed, her heel catching on a loose cobble and making her stumble, compensating by recovering with an elegant step. "You said the killer probably drove to the crime scene, with the victim," she stated, her mind still whirring eagerly. "Say that you're right- why wouldn't the killer just leave the suitcase in the car, and wait to dispose of it later? It's not like it would be any more or less noticeable that way. I mean- this is a killer who is clever enough to make their murder look like a suicide. Surely it wouldn't be that much of a stretch to think that they would have realised that dumping it further from the scene meant it was less likely to be recovered- or at least delay the police finding it, which would compromise forensic evidence."

"That? Oh. Simple: panic." Sherlock said, his consonants cut-glass. "He had just committed murder, after all, and this is his first mistake. He's not covering very well. Not even the clever criminals tend to make logical decisions when faced with the possibility of being caught. No, he wanted it off his hands as soon as possible. Now- any backstreet wide enough to accommodate a car," he continued his previous vein of thought seamlessly. "And somewhere he wouldn't be noticed- somewhere the suitcase would be hidden a decent amount of time- a skip, tipping site, something like that. Can't be too obvious, he wouldn't be obvious."

" _Naturalmente_ ," Scarlett breathed a fluent utterance of vaguely annoyed yet increasingly entertained Italian, not quite believing the absurdity of the evening she had succeeded in getting herself into. "Anything else?"

Sherlock stopped so suddenly that she almost crashed into his back.

"Yes. Where's John?"

Scarlett raised an eyebrow at how perplexed Sherlock sounded- the question asked with an innocent confusion, as though he had only just noticed John's absence and had assumed, up until that point, that he was keeping pace.

"Back at the crime scene, would be my guess. You dragged me away before he had a chance to catch up. Ah- which reminds me," Scarlett added in an undertone, fishing her phone out of her pocket and unlocking the screen with a swipe of her thumb. She tapped open her contacts icon, beginning a new and highly apologetic text to her cousin, realising belatedly she was still wearing her white gloves from the crime scene.

"Oh." Sherlock paused, almost awkwardly. "Well- I mean, that's- perhaps you should-"

"Way ahead of you." Scarlett cut him off. She idly wondered where _apology_ was categorised in his vocabulary; most likely it was nudged into some disused, forgotten little corner of his brain, tucked away alongside tact, social propriety and patience- that was, if her approximations of him thus far were correct. It was fortunate for Sherlock that neither she nor John were easily offended, she supposed.

"Oh." Sherlock could have almost sounded relieved. "Oh- good. Tell him to meet us at Baker Street," he instructed her, before taking her arm once more and continuing on, Scarlett shielded in his slipstream.

"Uh- _Holmes_ -"

"Keep texting. Not far now."

" _Great_ ," Scarlett muttered, her phone's touch screen highlighting the contours of her dark, taut jacket with liquescent white, tapping out the message as Sherlock towed her behind him, steering her quickly but safely each corner. They were driving ever deeper into the maze of backstreets, cutting an obscure route that Scarlett had never known existed. "This vantage point is-?"

"I know a place." He tapped his temple with a single gloved finger. "Have the entire city memorised."

"Doesn't that take a lot of maintenance? To keep it up to date?" Scarlett asked with deliberate nonchalance, correcting a typo.

"Of course. But sleep is dull, therefore…" Sherlock flourished the hand that was not wrapped around her elbow with the elegance of a virtuoso composer, indicating the unspoken conclusion.

Scarlett analysed the fluid motion, wondering if he was involved in music, and making a mental note to ask him later. "On that we can agree, Mr Holmes."

" _Sherlock_ ," he corrected her firmly, drawing to an abrupt stop. "Here. The roof."

Scarlett lowered her phone, bearing a half-finished text and a blinking cursor, and looked up at the building. A block of dark matte brickwork and mouldering wood, its only remarkable feature seemed to be that it was approximately a single storey taller than those around it.

"How- oh. The fire escape?"

"Not bad, Miss Rossini," Sherlock almost purred, his eyes gleaming down at her delightedly. "It should be just around the corner. Do keep up, please."

"I think I've been doing a fairly good job of that so far," Scarlett commented dryly, locking her phone on the incomplete message and returning it to her pocket, sauntering after him.

Concealed around the bend, the frame of rusting metal clung to the side of the building, its narrow landings passing a succession frosted sash windows on each floor as it wound its path downwards. Sherlock leapt up easily, grasping one of the lowermost rung of the ladder suspended above them and drawing the retractable steps down, ascending without a backward glance. Scarlett shadowed him, and the ladder swung back into place after them with scream of metal and a hollow _clang_.

The metal pipe of the railing was so cold that it seemed to burn, even through the latex of her glove. Scarlett chased the fluttering hem of Sherlock's coat, the slats of the fire escape rattling underneath the solid heel of her boots- by the time she reached the rooftop, clambering onto the flat plane of concrete with a high step and as much grace as she could muster, given the chill biting through her clothing, Sherlock was already circling the perimeter, scanning the streets unfurled below and around them, the light of the full moon glancing off his tall figure with a tint of eerie blue.

Scarlett tracked him on the periphery of her vision, and stepped towards the edge cautiously, near the inert chimney tops, slipping her phone out of her pocket to complete her text to John. The wind swirled up around her, and she raked her hair out of her eyes as it floated across her vision, lifted into a cloud around her before being whipped back away from her face, vaguely aware of Sherlock's movements at her back.

Only when she was satisfied with the lengthy message did Scarlett look up.

London glittered back at her in an intricate web of light, countless luminous gemstones studded on liquid darkness, vibrant shimmering colour bleeding into the glossy ink-surface of the Thames in the distance. Ambient light was reflected weakly off the weather-worn stone of ancient landmarks and Victorian buildings, and above her, the soaring dome of skies was uncharacteristically clear and dark, a taint of sable smeared across the furthest horizon, yet offering the glinting of a scattering of stars nonetheless as she tilted her head back. Tears from the cold wind pierced the corners of her eyes, the light splintering, making the view fifty times more magnificent.

"Scarlett?"

She heard him approach, his footsteps tapping on the hard, stippled surface of the rooftop.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" She breathed, tugging her high collar closer around her neck, shivering, her gaze never leaving the view; her opaque breath streamed across her vision, whipped away by the breeze before it could veil the stars from her.

He paused, and for a long moment the only sounds were Scarlett's shivering breath and the billow and snap of Sherlock's greatcoat behind him. Anyone other than Scarlett might have missed the note of uncertainty when he finally spoke.

"Which part?"

Scarlett shrugged, crossing her arms over her chest tightly, shielding herself ineffectively from the frozen air; the temperature was dropping ever further as the evening waned into night.

"All of it- I suppose. In its way." She swept a rogue strand of hair behind her ear firmly, her smile inexorable. Her heritage was too complex, her cynicism too enduring, to ever call herself patriotic- but she loved her country for all its unique beauty and many flaws. "Buildings, streetlights, bridges and roads that have been here for decades. A settlement that has been standing here and flourishing in trade and culture for centuries. A river that has probably existed for a thousand of years before- and a sky that has watched over it all for infinitely longer. Past, present and future- history and progress- a perfect snapshot of time, all bottled up in one city." She let out a laugh that trembled from the cold. "God, I _love_ London."

She looked up at Sherlock, and saw him contemplating the horizon, his mouth set- as though he was attempting to see what she could in the sparkling skyline. With his hawk-sharp attention diverted, Scarlett took the opportunity to examine him properly. He was rather gorgeous, truthfully- strikingly so, his alabaster skin seeming to glow, lunar, in exotic contrast to his dark crisp curls- stylishly unkempt, the colour that had been dark bitter chocolate in warmer light had turned as glossily black as raven feathers under the stars, clashing with steel blue eyes. His irises remained vibrant even under the monochromatic dye of the night, plumes of his crystallised breath floating into the air, wreathing his sculpted features as they dispersed.

Looking up at Sherlock Holmes, in that moment, Scarlett could barely believe that he was real- that anyone who was so ethereal, so brilliant, yet so viscerally _human_ underneath it could possibly exist. He was such a paradox that it was breathtaking.

"Yes," Sherlock suddenly murmured, looking heavenwards, his rich voice becoming soft, carrying an undercurrent of something that she had not heard from him yet. "You're right. It is rather- beautiful. I suppose." His gaze locked upon hers, searching, as though he was expecting to see the details of her life etched in minute detail into her eyes. "In its way."

Scarlett met his eyes unflinchingly, allowing him to examine her without comment, oddly untroubled by his uncannily aquiline stare. Even so, she altered her expression to bear a faint yet significant hint of trepidation, strengthening her mask with the subtlest of alterations.

The moment was fleeting. Sherlock exhaled, his expression relaxing infinitesimally as his gaze flicked down to her phone, still clutched in hand. "Ready?"

Scarlett started out of her falsified trance, and resurrected the inert screen that had darkened while idling, sending the message with a tap of a numb fingertip.

"Now I am, yes. I- wait. Ready for… _what_ , exactly?"

Sherlock smirked, and Scarlett knew at that moment that her masquerade was still very much intact. Privately, she hoped that she could emerge from behind it before long; she wanted to know what the consulting detective would make of the real Scarlett Rossini, not the shades of her she had allowed him to see.

"Let's just say that you'll need those latex gloves, Miss Rossini."

 

* * *

 

John, even as desolate as he felt, couldn't bring himself to be upset with Scarlett.

It was not for lack of effort- he _was_ trying; quite concertedly, as a matter of fact- as he stepped out into the open air, the strap of Scarlett's deceptively heavy messenger bag arranged carefully across his uninjured shoulder. Alone and adrift in the detached atmosphere that had filled the vacuum of his cousin's sudden exit, John found that his irritation towards Scarlett was impossible to grasp for longer than a few moments. John cursed his conscience, and that fact that it was quietly- and rather snidely, for something that was just a metaphorical segment of his own psyche- prodding him to the conclusion that, considering some of the stupider things he had done in his years, he couldn't begrudge Scarlett a moment of recklessness. And that was even without mention of the fact that he was the one who had bought her to the Baker Street flat in the first place, technically making it his fault she had become swept up in the night's insanity.

Sherlock Holmes, by contrast, John was feeling sufficiently irked at.

John leaned heavily on his crutch in an attempt to ease the shooting pain developing in his leg, his gaze circling the area slowly as he made his way towards the perimeter of the police line; in a move driven by reflex, he scanned his surroundings in a brief, vain hunt for a shimmer of pale blonde in the dusk- not that he expected to find his cousin to still be close by.

"He's gone."

John recognised the voice, and almost immediately sighted Sally Donovan on his left flank. She was stood next to the same police car she had been stationed by when they had arrived, handing a clipboard, pinned with a sheaf of forms, back to her uniformed colleague, her demeanour was only slightly less cool than it had been in Sherlock's presence. Apparently, the sergeant had deemed John a non-threat and overall neutral party, and therefore worth being minimally civil towards.

Despite knowing that Scarlett would text him soon enough, John was nevertheless interested to draw what he could out of someone who knew his potential flatmate. It was not that he doubted Mike Stamford's recommendation; it was that hard experience had taught him that a single person's opinion, no matter how trustworthy they were in and of themselves, was not equal to the truth.

"What, Sherlock Holmes?"

"Yeah, he just took off. He does that," Donovan stated with an air of passive-aggressive apathy. "And the girl was with him, when he left, if you're looking for her."

John shifted his weight to his other foot, a stab of pain reminding him that he couldn't. "Are they coming back?"

Sally shrugged. "Didn't look like it."

"Right… thank you." John replied with a veneer of politeness, curbing any external reaction before it could form; even knowing the Scarlett was a grown woman and perfectly capable of defending herself, a protective instinct that had lain dormant until only a few months ago was uncoiling in his chest, like the first hint of lead in the clouds of a mounting storm. Somewhere from deep within his memory, a fond image rose, shimmering, to the surface of his mind's eye- that of a little girl, sat atop the edge of a mahogany kitchen table and valiantly holding back tears as John, still a young, confident medical student, delicately cleaned a deep laceration on her shin, answering her questions about infections and healing rates and medicines diplomatically. The fifteen year-old memory somehow blurred together with one from only last week, the girl turned young woman watching avidly over his shoulder as they sat in the tiny kitchen of their flat, John sketching out a reaction mechanism of the protein she had asked him about.

John blinked back into reality.

Accepting the bland reply with disinterest, Donovan had swivelled back around upon her high heel, as though she was about to reengage her colleague in discussion- but turned back towards John at the last second.

"That girl. Who is she to you?"

Some small, stubborn, miraculously undamaged section of John- the part of him that had retained every sliver of training that had helped him survive and continue saving lives on the front lines- felt a ripple of amusement. Donovan's ability as an officer of the law, and an interrogator, was obvious- her candour was cleverly designed to catch him off his guard, and if used on almost anyone else, it probably would have worked.

However, if she was under the impression that John's meticulously constructed guard was going to buckle under the feeble weight of such a basic trick, she was sorely mistaken.

"She's family," John answered evenly, seeing no reason to lie and every reason to be deliberately vague. " _My_ family."

Donovan eyed him carefully, the way that someone might look at a docile snake that they could not quite tell if it was venomous or not.

"By the way," John continued, glancing around in search of a street sign, "where am I?"

Donovan raised her eyebrows fractionally. "Brixton."

Taking the response as the severely unhelpful piece of information that it was, John set it aside. "Well, er- do you know where I could get a cab? It's just- well." A prickle of heat seared at the back of his neck, cracking his level-headed façade briefly. "My leg."

"Uh…" Donovan crossed to the police tape, lifting it up with a practiced hook of her index finger. "Try the main road," she suggested, inclining her head in the general direction.

"Thanks," John said, stiffly stepping underneath the long, fluttering strip of chequered plastic.

She dropped the tape behind him, letting in fall back to waist height, and John began to walk away.

"But you're not his friend." It was said with precision timing, her words streamlined yet blunted to make the greatest impact possible. John halted, his jaw working rigidly. "And that girl isn't, either," Donovan continued, unremitting. "Sherlock Holmes doesn't _have_ friends." John turned, and was met with an appraising, superior stare, tinged at the edges with curiosity. "So who are you?"

John could almost hear Scarlett's cuttingly sweet response in his ear, accompanied by a blazing smile.

 _This is Captain John H. Watson, one of the best front line trauma doctors you will ever meet in your lifetime, formerly of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers. Who are_ you _,_ _again?_

"I'm-" John swallowed, hard. "I'm- nobody. I just met him."

Donovan's attitude shifted again. "Okay, a bit of advice, then: stay away from that guy. And keep the girl away from him too, if you care about her."

" _Why_?" John asked brusquely, deciding that two could play that game, instantly on the defensive at the mention of Scarlett's wellbeing.

The condescending flicker returned to her expression, accompanied by an increasingly bitter smile.

"Do you know why he's here?"

John was silent, refusing to fall against that particular tripwire.

"He's not paid or anything," Donovan continued faux-nonchalantly. "He _likes_ it. He gets off on it. And the weirder the crime, the more he gets off- and you know what?" She breathed in a cold, jaded smile. "One day, just showing up won't be enough. One day, we'll be standing around a body and Sherlock Holmes will be the one that put it there."

"And why would he do that?" John said dubiously.

"Because he's a psychopath," Donovan said lightly. "Psychopaths get bored."

With a matter of fact smile, Donovan was cut off from whatever she was about to say next by the firm resonance of her superior's voice.

" _Donovan_!" Lestrade called tersely from the entrance to the house.

"Coming!"

The sergeant turned, and swiftly walked away towards her boss, shooting John one last hard glance as she strode back towards the crime scene.

" _Stay away from Sherlock Holmes_."

John watched Donovan depart, mind restlessly churning underneath his skull like a complex of gears as he processed all he had heard. Shaking his head slightly, he turned and walked resignedly towards the main road, refusing to linger- either on the street, or upon his own thoughts.

A clear, acutely artificial trill punctured his hearing: the crimson public telephone box on the hem of the pavement was ringing. John paused for a few seconds, before ignoring the negligible anomaly and checking his watch with an exhausted sigh, continuing down the empty road without another glance.

The tone cut off mid-ring, falling ominously silent.

It was two minutes and a text alert throbbing in his pocket before he broke from his reverie. Retrieving his phone from his jacket pocket, John had to smile affectionately when he scanned through the new message, the cold digital print resonating with a sincere, abashed apology.

 _Am so sorry I ran out on you_  
like that. Got carried away- think  
we have a lead. Meet me back at  
Baker Street? Go ahead and take  
my purse, use it for cab as an  
apology. Will also buy coffee for  
a week. Please don't hate me.

_SR_

John halted with a fond yet exasperated sigh, knowing that if he didn't accept her monetary apology- which was a downright absurd gesture, in his opinion, considering that Scarlett was a university student who refused financial assistance from her parents wherever she found it possible; which was to say, always, since Scarlett was a very stubborn and resourceful young woman- she would take it as a sign that he hadn't forgiven her. And John, for all his solidity of character, would rather face an enemy platoon equipped with only a combat knife and his wits than one of Scarlett's patented, perfected guilt trips.

John stepped towards the kerb.

No sooner had the thought of flagging down the next unoccupied cab solidified in his mind than a payphone, mounted onto the interior wall of a nearby fast food restaurant, visible from behind the sheet of glass, began to ring. John glanced towards it, just in time to see one of the members of the serving staff move to pick up the receiver- outstretched hand less than an inch away, it fell silent before it could be answered. Perplexed, the employee shrugged and swiftly returned to work.

Looking away, John felt something settling deep in the pit of his stomach, loaded and dangerously primed. A strange occurrence happening twice within a few minutes was likely pure coincidence, he convinced himself, as he began walking again, his leg numbing underneath the strain.

Three times, however, can be accused of being a pattern.

Another generic ring- shrill, efficient, insistent- sounded from the nearby crimson telephone box, at the exact moment that he drew parallel to it. John glared into the clouded panels and scanned the area, waiting for someone to claim the mysterious call. Another city, at this hour, might have begun to slip into a wakeful slumber; the innards of London still roiled with motion, like water bought to the boil, garish light and a miasma of chatter and traffic rumbling around him.

And yet still, not a single soul moved towards the phone.

Finally trading his confusion in for curiosity, John heaved a sigh and stepped awkwardly into the phone booth, snapping the door shut behind him. Unhooking the glossy black receiver from its cradle, John pressed the weathered plastic to his ear.

"Hello?"

" _There is a security camera on the building to your left_ ," an unctuous, crisp male voice replied. John's eyebrows contracted, sifting through his memories as he made an attempt to recognise the speaker, only to find it completely unfamiliar. " _Do you see it?_ "

Bemused, John settled for asking the most obvious question first. "Who's this?" No answer. "Who's speaking?"

" _Do you see the camera… Dr Watson?_ "

From inside the phone booth, John looked up, his tone deliberately cordial even as the nape of his neck began to prickle.

"Yeah, I see it."

" _Watch_."

The camera, mounted high upon the corner of the building in question, began to move. Where it had once been pointed directly at the phone booth, it smoothly rotated until its lens was uselessly facing the asphalt instead.

John tensed, hardening like concrete, but forced himself to remain calm.

" _There is another camera on the building opposite you,_ " the voice continued in a low cadence. " _Do you see it?_ "

John gave a wordless noise of confirmation that hummed on his tongue apprehensively, eyes fixed on said camera. Just like the first, one second it was innocuously stationary, affixed to its pedestal with an impassive digital eye; the next, it had swivelled away from him entirely.

" _And, finally,_ " the voice, tinny through the unflattering filter of the connection, potent nonetheless, concluded smoothly, " _at the top of the building on your right._ "

This time, the camera adjusted to look straight at John first- its dark convex lens glinting within the protective rectangular rim of its white casing, the speck of a red light glaring beside it, marking it as operational and recording- before turning aside. The CCTV cameras surveying the street had each been carefully adjusted to crop him out of the scope of their view.

John did not like where this was going.

"How are you doing this?" He asked quietly.

The voice lilted with a sigh, almost bored in its reply, and John was struck with the uncomfortable notion that said speaker must do this a lot. " _Get into the car, Dr Watson. I would make some sort of threat, but I'm sure your situation is quite clear to you…_ "

As a sleek, featureless black vehicle with tinted windows drew up beside him, the driver slipping out in a crisp black suit to open the door for him, John knew that it was not a request.

 

* * *

 

"Anything?" Sherlock called, the echo of his voice ricocheting like a bullet around the narrow alley.

The girl in question, currently eight feet to his right, was industriously sifting through assorted debris piled against a garage wall with one gloved hand, the other holding her phone aloft, the LED torch embedded below the eye of the camera lens producing a surprisingly strong glare. "Nothing yet," she said, stepping back from a stained, threadbare armchair sprawled on its side and throwing aside the rainwater-drenched tarp draped over it with a crackling slosh, steadily beginning to sound as nettled by their lack of progress as Sherlock. Briefly, he severed his attention from the skip to track her out of the corner of his eye, curious. Night had finally devoured the evening and fallen, dense and heavy, over the city, but Scarlett's nonchalant serenity had never failed for a moment. She paused to tuck the longest strands of her fringe behind her ear, the light from her phone dancing, carving through the darkness and illuminating her figure in surreal fragments as she loosed a blithe, mirthless laugh.

"Everything here is decidedly- _non-pink_. I'll be over there in a second, almost done."

"We may be done quicker that way," Sherlock ground out, masking the needling heat of frustration pooling in the base of his spine by hefting aside a miscellaneous mouldering wooden frame with excessive vehemence. In the space of thirty-five minutes, the two of them had traversed and painstakingly combed through three quarters of the possible dumping sites he had identified; the numbness of tedium had begun creeping into his skull, contaminating, deadening, rotting away the decadent high that the complex mystery of a case had offered, starving his brain of oxygen. If this and the subsequent two sites did not yield metaphorical fruit, Sherlock would be forced to widen the radius. The frustration of it burned in his veins like venom.

At least, if nothing else, Sherlock reasoned, he had a surprisingly competent assistant. For the reservation initially displayed at the prospect of searching for the suitcase by hand, Sherlock had to admit that Scarlett had taken to the unsavoury task with admirable grace. She possessed the same refreshing efficiency and unshakable composure that he had detected in John- perhaps it was a family trait- attentive, her quiet enthusiasm tempered by a healthy dose of caustic, observant wit. Sherlock had to wonder whether her bearing was solely due to the pragmatic reasoning that this was her best chance to gain practical experience for her future career- or, possibly, because she was simply having as much fun as he was.

Sherlock tried to press that particularly tempting thought back from the forefront of his mind, not liking the way the muscles of his abdomen seemed to flutter in approval. It was entirely too distracting.

At that very moment, Sherlock suddenly unearthed a flash of bright colour within the rusting skip- concealed underneath a sheet of thin black plastic. He froze, nerves sparking like live wires.

" _Scarlett_!" Sherlock shouted, seeing her straighten instantly on his periphery. " _Here_ , quickly-!"

She was at his side within a handful of scuffing footsteps. The iron mouth of the skip snagged against her jacket, cutting into the malleable curve of her chest as she gripped the edge, angling her phone and deftly casting a wave of light over the area hastily indicated. It washed over the debris, trickling down into the traps of shadow- and striking upon something with a strong canvas weave, dyed a conspicuous hot pink, the taut fabric streaked with bars of smooth black plastic.

"Please tell me that's what I think it is," Scarlett breathed.

"Only one way to find out." Sherlock reached down into the skip, searching until he brushed his fingers against and grasped the smooth plastic of it carry-handle; with a huff of satisfaction, he heaved the small suitcase out, its sides snagging against the exposed iron springs of an old mattress, lowering the lightweight suitcase onto the ground with a rattle of zips.

"ID tag?" Scarlett suggested, switching off the flashlight app on her smartphone and slipping it into her pocket. She was coiled tense from the chill in the air, tone laced with anticipation.

Dropping to the pavement on one knee, Sherlock flipped open the small pink leather tag attached on an elastic thread, its owner's details inked in vivid blue biro onto the card slotted behind the window of plastic. "Jennifer Wilson," he murmured. He snapped the leather label shut between his gloved palms and gave Scarlett a triumphant smile, exhaling so forcefully that the resultant fog enveloped his vision for a moment. " _Our victim_."

The melting laugh she responded with was relieved and nigh upon beatific, like the raw radiance of winter sunshine on wet asphalt.

" _Finally_. What now?" Scarlett asked, biting down on the wrist of one glove and ripping it off with her teeth, snatching the slithering latex out of her mouth and slipping it into her pocket. Her eyes were pewter, reflecting the low light and marbled with threads of something darker, their curvature and colour reminiscent of the rippled silver precipitate that gathered against the bottom of a test tube when ammoniacal silver nitrate was combined with an aldehyde. She was surprisingly alert against the backdrop of the late hour, vibrant and incongruous against the cold.

Sherlock snapped his gaze away from her. "Baker Street." He stood abruptly, picking up the suitcase and carrying its weight easily, beginning a brisk pace towards the closest artery of the main street.

"Not- Scotland Yard?"

"Of course not," he said disdainfully, envisaging surrendering such a rich cask of evidence to the indelicate hands and slow, mundane processing procedure of New Scotland Yard. "No, they can have it after we're done with it. Otherwise we'll likely have another body on our hands before they can so much as file the paperwork. We'll head back to Baker Street, have John meet us there, examine it ourselves."

"Oh… okay."

Sherlock glanced at her. Scarlett's smile, gaze aimed straight forwards in front of them, was absurdly pure, unguarded and authentic. Sherlock deliberated whether it was the same expression worn by other young women upon experiencing a stroke of what they considered _good luck_ \- such as finding a favourite long-lost lipstick trapped at the back of their makeup drawer.

They turned a corner, the stillness crushing in on them, and Sherlock found himself breaking the fragile stalemate.

"You are a very unusual young woman, Miss Rossini," he commented.

"Am I?" Scarlett asked, sounding simultaneously amused and vaguely flattered. "Thank you."

She paused, deliberating her reply, and suddenly Sherlock was assailed with the strange thought that the two of them were somehow embroiled in a twisting, intricate dance- one that he was following by instinct, anticipating and guessing at the steps rather than recalling them from memory.

"So I take it you do this kind of thing often. As part of your occupation as a consulting detective."

"Yes." He glanced down at her critically, sensing the distance in the set of her mouth, apprehension written in fine print in the angle of the brief dip of her head. "Does that bother you?"

Scarlett looked up sharply. The shade of her smile was suddenly artificial. "No. Why, should it?"

"Possibly. Clearly you care deeply for John," Sherlock said, watching her sweep her hair behind her ear with a single finger- a curious idiosyncrasy that he had begun to notice arose when she was considering something. "You wouldn't have come with him tonight if you didn't. And since he is the only family you have in London, you worry he might have less time to spend with you if he decides to move into Baker Street- especially seeing as you lead such separate lives already, thanks to your age difference and your studies. Most of the time you spend together is within your shared flat. Am I wrong?"

She looked distinctly uncomfortable by this point, glaring down at the veins of rainwater glistening in the cracks in the asphalt, shoulders tense and fingering her cuff. "What else have you deduced about me?"

Sherlock's reply was politely neutral. "I'm not sure you want an answer to that."

Scarlett yanked her sleeve down viciously.

"Try me."

Her tone was so fierce that it was tranquil, challenging, edged with the iron extracted from her eyes.

Sherlock appraised her in a single sweeping gaze, and obliged.

"Italian heritage- transparently obvious by your surname, but there are also a handful of subtler clues most people would miss; namely, the hints of typically Mediterranean ethnic qualities in your bone structure. High cheekbones, straight column of the nose, jaw angle to chin, smooth curve of the neck, not to mention, just a _hint_ of olive in your complexion," he said, head held high, studying her profile carefully out of the corner of his eye. Scarlett glanced at him, her lashes casting a shadow of her irises, drawing the darkness in like ink into water. Sherlock looked away, turning a sharp corner.

"You were born and raised in the UK, going by your accent and relationship with John. However, you used an Italian phrase earlier, with immaculate pronunciation, so you were exposed to native Italian speakers growing up. Paternal grandparents would be my guess, judging by your last name. You are a disillusioned Roman Catholic, come from a relatively wealthy family, are somewhat estranged from your parents for various reasons- possibly because of religion, career choices, the usual- but I think maybe they just didn't like their only child moving away for university. Either way, you don't accept money from them unless completely necessary or unavoidable. A glance at your phone was enough: a fairly expensive handset, but about eighteen months old by this point, yet still in very good condition. There's a charm hanging from it, diamanté-studded, the shape of your initials- _SR_ \- but your lack of makeup and visible jewellery tells me you're not the type to have wasted money on such a personalised and frivolous trinket for yourself. No, that phone was a gift from your parents. As I said before, that makes John the only family you have in the area. You hold the rare office of being a blood relation that he willing to spend a prolonged amount of time with, and are quite possibly the only one he respects. You're also single; the kind of person who would catch your romantic taste is too rare, so you choose to focus on your studies instead. I can relate."

He took a breath, leading the way through a shortcut passageway. The alleyway brightened with an artificial shimmer of burnt orange and white, heralding the approach of stronger streetlamps lining the borders of the main road, the roar of vulcanised rubber on asphalt rising around them.

"You have an unconscious sense of balance and precision when you move, characteristic to someone who has undergone years of physical training that requires a person to be aware of every part of their body at all times. Given John's blatant protectiveness over you, martial arts can be safely ruled out, which leaves either ballet or gymnastics, given your gender."

"How stereotypical," Scarlett interrupted blandly.

"Stereotypes are tools- and I'm not wrong, am I?" Sherlock said, casting her a confident smile. "Ah, and before I forget: the hole in your jeans, as well as your age and the weight of your bag, were enough to establish that you are currently in university for a chemistry degree," he continued seamlessly. "You don't smoke, and the hole is too small and circular to be an accidental cut. It's also below the length of a standard-issue lab coat. Probably someone was a little careless with a strong bench corrosive in the chemical labs. I would bet you didn't even notice that you got splashed until the fibres disintegrated in the wash. Chemistry degree, interest in a human skull, substantiated by your responses at the crime scene- forensic science aim."

Struck by raw impulse, Sherlock stopped and grasped Scarlett's arm with his free hand, halting them sharply on the hem of the pavement of the main street. The constant hum of the intersection cloaked them on the narrow alcove leading to the warren of alleys behind them.

"And yet you're indecisive," he said, voice low. Sherlock raked his eyes over her, seeing the residue of discomfort drain into something else, her pupils deepening, dilating, darkening her eyes. Sensing his advantage, Sherlock tugged her closer still, feeling her balk but keeping his grip loose enough so that she could pull away if she felt threatened.

She didn't.

"The truth is, Scarlett, as much as you try and deny it: you- are _-_ _bored_."

Scarlett tensed underneath his fingers, a silent and involuntary confirmation.

"They've told you that you need to do this tedious step first for so long that you've resigned yourself to this degree- and though you'll never admit it, you're _bored_. It's _crime_ , living breathing crime, not forensics, that's your true forte. This, _tonight_ , is what you _really_ want. You've been craving it. _You're enjoying this._ And if only you had the chance- then you could _really_ shine. You have the potential. But nobody's looking- are they?"

Scarlett stared up at him, a juddering breath escaping her in a hesitant, opaque wisp that swirled up and dispersed into the ink-black skies.

" _You're_ looking," she said quietly.

"I'm always looking," Sherlock said softly, watching her eyes dart over him, piercingly, filled with something he didn't have a name for. He released her abruptly, straightening, his tone light.

"So- did I get anything wrong? Miss anything?"

Scarlett inhaled deeply, casting her gaze across the busy street evasively. "It's an acid burn, I think, in my jeans- some idiot spilled concentrated hydrochloric one day. I've been doing ballet since I was six, gymnastics and dance since I was eleven, and was good enough to compete in both at a low level. Though, to be honest, I've had no time for any of that since I've been at uni. You're right about the phone- it was a gift from my mother. And John is the only family I have in the area."

Sherlock smirked to himself.

"I also wasn't born in the UK, my Italian blood is not where you think it's from, I'm only estranged from one of my parents- and you missed that I happen to play piano and some acoustic guitar," Scarlett added brightly, smiling teasingly up at his stunned expression, the steel trap of the mind behind her pretty eyes showing in full force, as calm as the skies after a rainstorm. "Surprising, since you play an instrument yourself. Something hard to master, I think, something that requires a high level of dexterity. Violin? And you compose, as well, I assume."

It took him a moment to recover. "Yes, I… yes, both."

"Oh," Scarlett said, pleasantly surprised. "Well, it's not quite at your level, clearly, but I'm glad that I pegged that, at least." She looked out onto the main road, and jerked her head towards the nearby junction. "Taxi."

Sherlock looked up just in time to see the unoccupied black cab turning onto the road towards them. He quickly stepped up to the kerb and hailed it, leaving Scarlett to give Baker Street's address as he deposited the suitcase into the taxi's trunk.

The moment he snapped the door shut behind him, the cab pulled away.

The back seat of the cab was silent for an eternity of a moment.

"I just realised something," Scarlett said suddenly.

Sherlock considered the young woman at his side, elegant and harmoniously smooth and clear as a violin glissando; her hair was gleaming like strands of glass, spilling over her shoulders, forming an exquisite contrast against the ink-black of her jacket, the streetlamps setting her awash with false watercolour shades of dawn. In the midst of committing the rather resplendent image to memory and tucking it away somewhere that he was unlikely to accidentally delete it, as well as absently musing where he should relocate her and the good doctor to if he decided to give them permanent residences in his mind palace, Sherlock noticed that she was smiling.

"Oh?"

Scarlett glanced towards him, vaguely embarrassed, as though wondering whether or not she should speak her mind.

"That was… my first real forensic investigation."

Turned away to look out of the window with a disbelieving giggle, a newfound aura of lightness swirling around her, she didn't see Sherlock shift to gaze out of his own window with a faintly satisfied smile.


	4. Ad Novum Ordinarium

_ad novum ordinarium : the new ordinary_

* * *

"You _did_ text John, didn't you?"

" _Yes_."

"And he definitely received it."

Sherlock swivelled his head to regard her with piercing exasperation. He was reclined lengthways on the sofa, shoulders propped against up the arm, head resting on a cream and gold brocade cushion, previously staring up at the ceiling in a deep meditative thought. Scarlett was sitting atop the coffee table, legs crossed neatly and the heel of her hand underneath her chin- the pink suitcase rested next to her, split open like a cadaver on a mortuary slab, the silks and makeup and perfume contained within sifted through meticulously. Scarlett had found little more than what she had expected in the medley of items hastily cobbled together within: in the lingerie that was more air than ruby French lace, the inner pocket crammed with expensive cosmetics, the carefully selected change of clothes and well-worn romance novel, Scarlett had read Jennifer Wilson as thoroughly as though the woman herself were sat before her- a woman who was secretive, efficient, professional, had a healthy dose of pride in her appearance, and was just a little lonely.

Scarlett could tell with a single glance that Sherlock had noticed something more- something related more intimately to the woman's death than her life. However, whatever it was, he had said nothing aloud, and Scarlett was certain that the malleable, easily impressed ingénue version of herself she was still playing would have never noticed, so she mentioned nothing on the subject. Tedious and exhausting as the act was becoming, mask weakening and eroding, it was entirely too much of a challenge for Scarlett to refuse- she blamed John's influence when she was a child for making her so stubborn- and besides, she was not willing to reveal her hand to the consulting detective just yet.

She was still waiting a reply. Sherlock was gazing at her intently, his eagle-sharp frost-coloured eyes possessing more natural depth than most, staring into her with the same calculating interest that he had directed Jennifer Wilson's corpse. Perhaps he found Scarlett to be as much of a riddle as the series of suicides, she thought with amusement. Either way, Sherlock seemed to know the unsettling effect of meeting a person's eyes directly, in perfect, prolonged eye-contact- but Scarlett refused to look away, uncomfortable, the way that anyone else would have- the way that she probably _should_ have.

Sherlock exhaled, and finally gave an indicative, languid flick of his fingers behind him. "Check, if you like. Phone's on the desk."

Scarlett hitched a single eyebrow.

"You're sure that's alright?"

Sherlock rolled his eyes emphatically, turning back towards the ceiling. " _Yes_. Now let me _think_."

Scarlett tapped a finger against the edge of the coffee table, hesitating. After a moment, she stood, stepping over to the desk, her stiff muscles protesting slightly. The onyx device was sat atop a file, next to the completed miniature Rubik's cube, trapping the card upon which Scarlet had copied down the victim's personal details neatly. Trying not to be intimidated by the QWERTY keypad- she was better with touch-screens, and in her opinion, a keyboard did not belong installed in a phone if you needed to such tiny buttons to achieve it- Scarlett reignited the screen and skimmed through the inbox, ignoring everything besides the messages to John's number. There were three in total, each sent within ninety seconds of each other.

 _Baker Street._  
Come at once  
if convenient.  
SH

 _If inconvenient,_  
come anyway.  
SH

_Could be dangerous.  
SH_

Scarlett smiled to herself, equal parts amused by and envious of how easily Sherlock had gauged John. The thought, however, left an unexpectedly bitter taste in her mouth, reminding her starkly of her own failures in that area.

"Received," Scarlett announced. "He saw it about twenty minutes ago."

"He'll here before long,," Sherlock dragged out in a low murmuring tone, half his attention already immersed somewhere far beyond her reach- wherever geniuses went to think, Scarlett supposed. "We'll wait. Need to think, anyway."

Scarlett, despite wanting to, made no reply, unbuttoning and slithering out of her jacket. The satin lining slipped from her like water, leaving her in her dark-wash jeans, ankle boots and the tailored white blouse underneath; the sleeves were three-quarter length, her collar deeply dipped, risking a flash of the black lace and silver silk of her bra when she moved. Scarlett caught a glimpse of herself in the large mirror above the fireplace and pinched the neckline together with two fingers, annoyed, lamenting that she had left her safety pins in her bag. Straightening the hem of her blouse with a sharp tug, she glared at her own refection, resigned. Flesh rarely failed to spark a reaction- but it wasn't exactly her preferred method of extracting information about someone's character.

Then again, she was constructing a diverse portfolio in a single encounter. Sherlock Holmes made for a complex appraisal, even by someone who was accustomed to taking a bite out of the heart of anyone and everyone that she met.

Scarlett set the BlackBerry down on the desk and glanced over her shoulder at Sherlock. He had stripped off his scarf and coat the moment they had spilled into the flat, his blazer removed, leaving him only in a dress shirt of palest blue; the crisp fabric pulled taut across the breadth of his chest, black slacks elongating his legs, his form languorous and utterly at ease- leaving him looking, if Scarlett were honest with herself, as though he had stepped out of one of the less PG districts of her mind. His eyes were a shade of verdigris in the shadow of warmer light, dark hair tinted with the colour of autumn, musician's fingers steepled before his mouth in a languidly erudite pose.

"Scarlett?"

She jolted slightly, adjusting her expression despite the fact that Sherlock still wasn't looking at her. "Mm-hm?"

"Nicotine patches. The desk. They help me think."

Scarlett considered the request for a moment, before deciding that it was in-character for her to oblige. "Oh… ah…"

She pivoted on the toe of her boot to scan the desk, sweeping her fringe out of her eyes, spying a slightly crushed box underneath a navy-bound hardback. "Aha! Found them." Sliding it out from under the book's weight, miraculously without toppling the glass paperweight resting on is cover onto the floor, she turned back towards the sofa. "So, why are you so certain that John will come?"

"Oh, he's bound to. You're here. John cares too much about you not to ensure your safety personally, even if you are an adult and your exit was somewhat abrupt." Sherlock said simply.

 _Which was not entirely my fault,_ Scarlett felt like saying defensively. _Partly, yes, but not entirely._

"Besides," Sherlock continued. "I suggested that it could be dangerous."

" _Ah_." Scarlett hummed comprehendingly. She was under no delusions about herself, or John: excess _ordinary_ killed them, slowly but surely, like paralytic venom. The signs had been present for years- John had chosen to become an army trauma doctor, one of the most demanding, adrenaline-fuelled occupations on the face of the earth, and Scarlett had been fascinated with the criminal justice system since she was eleven years old. They were neither of them built for normality- perhaps it was why they got along so well.

"I think that telling John that something could be dangerous might be as effective as baiting _me_ with evidence," Scarlett said meaningfully, stood at Sherlock's shoulder.

"Well, I assumed you wanted to see your _first forensic investigation_ through to its end," Sherlock said coolly.

Scarlett let herself laugh. "About that. If I get arrested for tampering with police evidence," she warned him, holding the box just out of his reach for emphasis, "I will blame you until my dying breath."

Sherlock's eyes glinted like topaz as Scarlett dropped the box in his palm, unfazed, extracting a paper chain and tearing off a strip, tossing the box aside carelessly on the coffee table. Scarlett looked down at the suitcase. Her eyes snagged on the paperback cover of the romance novel once again.

"An unhappy marriage, a string of lovers, yet still she held tight to the thought of a passionate idealistic love." Scarlett said to herself softly, feeling a pang of sympathy. "That's… a little sad."

"Hm?"

" _Non importa_ ," she covered seamlessly, leaning forwards and closing the suitcase, fastening it shut with a rasp of tiny metal teeth. "Shall I put this aside?"

Sherlock made an incoherent sound of consent at the back of his throat. Dragging the suitcase from the table with a dull whirr of rubber-coated wheels, Scarlett slipped into the adjoining kitchen and deposited it on the closest chair, raking her fingers through her hair and vaguely debating pinning it up again. It was surprisingly warm in the flat, a wave of heat radiating from the fireplace, tongues of orange flame flickering in the hearth. Scarlett soundlessly moved the mantelpiece where her phone resting, black screen illuminated by the icon of a battery filling incessantly with blocks of solid green light, the cord of a borrowed charger trailing from it. Her battery had been drained alarmingly quickly by her flashlight app, leaving her with nothing but a brick of dead hardware at the exact moment she had tried to text John.

Scarlett stepped around the stylish black leather armchair and, stepping over the twisted wire, she switched on her phone to check her messages.

A thought struck her suddenly.

"Holmes." Scarlett set her phone back down on the mantel, swivelling with a slow pivot to face him. "Remind me. The victim's phone wasn't found at the crime scene, right?"

Sherlock unbuttoned his left sleeve cuff with a dextrous flick of his fingers, tugging it open. "No," he said. "Why do you ask?"

"It just seems off, I suppose," she mused, her footfalls softened by the rust-red carpet underfoot as she wandered around the living room, fingertips grazing each surface she passed absently. "We live in a digital age- most people have one device at least. Jennifer Wilson had a high-ranking job in media, not to mention the multiple lovers. A woman like that has a smartphone, and she does _not_ forget to take it with her wherever she goes- picking it up before she walked out of the door would almost muscle memory. But it wasn't at the crime scene, and it wasn't in her suitcase- and she must have had a phone with her, because she didn't have a laptop or a tablet as an alternate. So, then? _What happened to it_?" Sherlock was watching her progress assiduously, saying nothing. "She died in that house, we can tell by her 'note', so that was the primary crime scene- she wasn't dumped there. Did she lose it beforehand? That would be the simplest explanation, but considering that she was murdered we probably shouldn't take anything for granted. It _could_ have been stolen for a reason- maybe the murderer took-"

She halted abruptly, staring down at Sherlock. He gazed back at her, a gulf of space between them.

"What?" He said innocently.

"You already knew," Scarlett said tonelessly.

"Well, yes," he replied, as though it had been painfully obvious.

"You could have _said_ you already figured it out!" She said, feigning dismay, pleased with the way the words emerged convincingly. Scarlett was aware that Sherlock was incomprehensibly intelligent; she was honestly no more surprised by the fact that he was several steps ahead of her than if John had identified the symptoms of influenza before her.

"I wanted to see if you would find your way to the answer yourself," Sherlock said simply. "And you did. See, I told you that you wouldn't be any worse than those morons down at Scotland Yard."

Scarlett folded her arms over her chest and glared out of the window. "So I'm guessing that the possibility that the killer has the phone has already crossed your mind," she said.

"It's a possibility. But then again, so is the phone simply being lost." He exhaled sharply. "How do feel about Italian?"

Scarlett was temporarily rendered speechless by the complete non-sequitur. "I assume you're referring to food."

"Mm. Hungry?"

Once again, Sherlock's tone was entirely too innocent for Scarlett's taste. She narrowed her eyes, injecting the traces of a smile into the look as an afterthought. "You're planning something," she said accusingly.

Sherlock smirked.

Finally, Scarlett gave a deliberately indifferent shrug. "Sure. Though I'm not really dressed for dinner," she added, glancing herself over and hooking her thumbs into her shallow jeans pockets. Her nail brushed something in her right hand pocket. Perplexed, she reached her index finger into the tight space, and extracted a flesh-warmed tube of brushed glass, black cap inscribed with gold lettering in delicate angular script: her favourite lip lacquer, a shade of red appropriately dubbed _Reckless_ that was so valued in her arsenal of makeup- just because she didn't like wearing it regularly didn't mean that she did not appreciate its many advantages- that she kept it strictly for emergency use only. "Oh, wait. This will do. Give me a minute."

Scarlett moved in front on the cold hearth and leaned into the mirror, unscrewing the cap and drawing out the wand. Her hand precise and well-practiced, she slicked an immaculate layer of the blood-coloured lacquer onto the supple flesh of her mouth, tracing out the naturally-drawn edges of her lips, watching the vermillion colour stain, deepen and turn matte within thirty seconds.

Behind her reflection in the glass, she saw Sherlock's reflection as he gripped the crook of his arm with a slow, groaning exhalation, relaxing, hand flexing and clenching, three patches applied to his forearm.

Her eyes narrowed.

The sound of footsteps strumming on the staircase outside interrupted her thoughts. Scarlett turned, smoothing out her expression- John was stood in the open doorway, looking oddly collected, as though time had unravelled several years and reversed the damage done to him by the bullet extracted from his shoulder.

"Why didn't you text?" John demanded the moment he caught sight of Scarlett.

Scarlett closed her lip lacquer with a snap, and lifted her phone with her newly freed hand for him to see. "Phone died. Holmes let me borrow a charger." _Chill,_ she nearly added defensively.

John softened, and gave a slight nod, moving into the flat. "Oh. Good, that's- I was just worried."

"I know," Scarlett said gently. Knowing that she was all he had, and he was all she had in return, she never wanted to worry him more than necessary. John stepped forwards, slipping the strap of her messenger bag off his right shoulder and offering it to her. "Oh-! Thank you," she took it with a grateful smile, setting it behind her by the armchair. "You're alright too, aren't you?"

John nodded again, brusquely, but with more grace than if anyone else had asked the question, and he turned to look at Sherlock. "What are you doing?"

"Nicotine patches," Scarlett supplied.

Sherlock's eyes opened slowly, and he peeled back his sleeve. "Helps me think. Impossible to sustain a smoking habit in London these days," he said pensively. "Bad news for brainwork."

Scarlett internally noted his habit of snapping his consonants at the back of his tongue every so often. The sound was pleasant, sharp and curt, and she decided that she liked it.

"Good news for breathing," John pointed out flippantly.

"Oh, _breathing_ ," Sherlock said with contempt. "Breathing's boring."

John stopped closed, halting at the left end of the coffee table. "Is that- _three_ patches?" He asked incredulously.

"It's a three-patch problem," Sherlock murmured in a matter of fact tone, steepling his fingers again underneath his chin.

John glanced at Scarlett questioningly. She simply looked vaguely entertained, smoothing over the edge of her freshly applied lip lacquer with the pad of her thumb. However, John knew better than to take Scarlett purely at face value- she was an actress with haunting talent, who played a different role on a daily basis simply because she _could_. Occasionally, it worried John- as though he could lose the real Scarlett to a hollow mask one day, leaving him with a hollow facsimile, a pale shade of the sharp young woman he knew and adored with every bone in his body. But then she made a playful yet cutting comment about her peers as she strode in the door of their shared flat, brought him tea before he even realised he wanted it, lay sprawled in the middle of the floor to soak up a sun-trap, her chemistry notes spread before her, and she was back, more vivid than ever.

John leaned forwards marginally to glance out of the window onto the street warily, before speaking again. "Well?" Sherlock was motionless, a statue of serenity. "You asked me to come, so I'm assuming it's important."

There was another split second of silence- then Sherlock's eyes snapped open with a start. "Oh, yeah, of course. Can I borrow your phone?"

Scarlett perched on the arm of the coral-red armchair behind her and placed two fingers at her temple.

John paused. "My _phone_?"

"Don't want to use mine," Sherlock elaborated. "Always a chance it will be recognised, it's on the website."

"Mrs Hudson's got a phone," John said, a little testily.

"Yeah, she's downstairs. I tried shouting but she didn't hear."

"And _Scarlett_? She has a phone-"

"It's still charging."

"You can still use- I was the other side of London!" John interrupted his own digression, emitting low metaphysical waves of irritation.

"There was no hurry," Sherlock said with a slight shrug. Scarlett watched the exchange with interest, rather like how most people would watch television. If John had been genuinely indignant, Scarlett knew he would have demanded that they both leave without preamble.

Instead, she watched with a flicker of satisfaction as he reached into the pocket of his black suede jacket, and held his mobile phone out.

"Here."

Sherlock, without moving any more than was strictly necessary, lifted his palm expectantly, eyes closed. With a slight scowl, John forcefully placed the phone directly in his hand.

Smoothly slipping the acquired device between his palms, Sherlock returned to his previous position without another word. John shook his head minutely in disbelief, and moved across the living room to where Scarlett was hovering delicately on the armchair, the sole of one boot grazing the carpet. He looked Scarlett over, instinctively searching for any trace of damage, and halted when he reached her mouth. "New lipstick?" John inquired.

Scarlett smiled. "Just one I barely use. I was feeling a little underdressed."

John, distracted enough not to notice the meaning embroidered into the words, glanced between her and Sherlock. "So what's this about- the case?"

" _Her case_ …" Sherlock murmured softly.

" _Her_ case?" John echoed.

"Yes, her suitcase, obviously." Sherlock reiterated impatiently. "The murderer took her suitcase, first big mistake…"

"Okay, he took her case," John said evenly; Scarlett could detect interest forming in the storm-blue of his eyes, watching it solidify like precipitate in a glass vial of chemical solution, "so?"

"It's no use, there's no other way, we'll have to risk it," Sherlock muttered. John's eyebrows contracted into a shallow frown. "On my desk- there's a number, I want you to send a text," Sherlock unfolded his hands, one arm resting across his waist as the other rose to proffer John's phone between his fingers.

John gave a tight smile, blinking rapidly, a hint of annoyance seeping the surface of his calm exterior. "You bought me here… to send a text?"

"Text, yes, the number, on my desk."

His jaw working furiously, John strode across the room and snapped his phone up once again. Seething, he paused and stepped over to the window, staring out of the cold panes of glass into the deepening darkness outside.

"Something wrong, John?" Scarlett asked conversationally. Sherlock looked up at the sound of her voice.

Still scanning the street below, John's reply was directed at the man still sprawled on the sofa. "Just met a friend of yours."

"A _friend_?" Sherlock asked with audible surprise.

"An enemy," John corrected.

"Oh," Sherlock said, his tone lightening amiably. "Which one?"

John merely stared at him blankly.

"You have more than one?" Scarlett inquired casually, crossing her legs neatly; she was balanced on the arm of the chair, her hands pressed either side of her hips, stabilising her centre of gravity on the curved edge of the arm.

"Over thirty at the last count, though I'm sure there's more out there," Sherlock said, equally blasé. Scarlett couldn't help but bite her lip with a brilliant smile, eyes closing briefly.

"Well, he's your archenemy, according to him- do people _have_ archenemies?"

Sherlock's expression suddenly turned dark, voice quiet and head turning fully to observe the military doctor.

"Did he offer you money to spy on me?"

Scarlett tensed imperceptibly.

"Yes," John said carefully.

"Did you take it?"

"No."

"Pity, we could have split the fee. Think it through next time," Sherlock chided. John, rather than look annoyed this time, simply took it in his stride with a flat smile.

"Who is he?"

"The most dangerous man you've ever met, and not my problem right now," Sherlock breathed out in a single exhalation, before repeating firmly, "On my desk, the number."

John turned to the desk, driven by sheer curiosity, and picked up the card, sliding his phone open and creating a new message. " _Jennifer Wilson_ \- that was- hang on, wasn't that the dead woman's-?" John started.

" _Yes_ , that's not important. Enter the number," Sherlock said, his tone severely bored. John's phone beeped into the ensuing quiet as he copied the number into the phone, throwing Scarlett a look that demanded answers; Scarlett returned it with a purposefully unconvincing look of confusion, in case Sherlock was watching. "Are you doing it?"

" _Yes_ ," John said shortly.

"Have you done it?"

"Ye- hang on!"

Scarlett trembled with silent laughter.

"These words exactly," Sherlock dictated slowly, eyes opening to pierce the ceiling above his head, suddenly seething with a newfound, contagious energy. " _What happened at Lauriston Gardens? I must have blacked out. Twenty-two Northumberland Street. Please come,_ " he concluded with the shadow of a satisfied smile softening his sculpted features.

"You blacked out?" John asked, tapping the message into the phone.

"What? No- no!" Sherlock vaulted off the sofa with one swift motion, taking the shortest route from his seat- one that happened to involve walking over the top of the coffee table with a single step, which Scarlett was beginning to suspect was regularly used as a seat, examination table, part of the carpet and essentially anything _but_ an actual coffee table- to where Scarlett had left the suitcase. "Type and send it. Quickly."

Scarlett stood, unplugging her phone from the charger and snapping off the power at the mains. At forty-eight per cent capacity, she predicted that it should have enough battery life to last the rest of the night, so long as she was economic and didn't make use of the more energy-devouring applications installed. Sherlock strode back into the room, carrying the suitcase easily on one hand, and took a seat in the armchair in front of Scarlett, dragging the chair set at the desk with him and using it as an improvised table.

"Have you sent it?"

"What's the address?"

"Twenty-two _Northumberland Street_ , hurry up!" Sherlock commanded imperiously.

Scarlett leaned against the sleek leather back of the armchair and hovered over Sherlock's shoulder, watching him unzip the case, threads of her hair slipping forwards to brush against the his high, angular cheekbone. Scarlett lingered to gage his reaction, but only for a moment before deciding that she was playing her hand a little unfairly, sweeping the strands behind the shell of her ear.

Little did she know that, at that precise moment, Sherlock was attempting to ignore the annoyingly enticing scent of her perfume, the sweetness of summer fruits with notes of honeysuckle and citrus an unexpectedly appealing blend.

John finished sending the text and his attention turned back to Sherlock- and the item in front of him. "That's… that's the pink lady's case, that's Jennifer Wilson's case."

"Of course," Scarlett affirmed. "Unless someone coincidentally tossed a fully-packed pink suitcase into a skip in London on the very same night that an identical case went missing from a murder scene. But I think that would be a bit convoluted even by my standards."

John surveyed the open miniature suitcase uncertainly. After a moment of tense silence, Sherlock rolled his eyes.

"Oh, perhaps I should mention, _I_ didn't kill her."

"I never said you did," John pointed out mildly.

"Why not? Given the text I just had you send and the fact that I have her case, it's a perfectly logical assumption," Sherlock churned out rapidly, eyebrows raised.

"Do people assume that you're a murderer on a regular basis?" Scarlett asked with honest interest, gazing at the back of Sherlock's head, his dark chocolate curls still artfully mussed.

Sherlock twitched his head towards her, a faint echo of a playful grin at his mouth. "Now and again, yes," he said, bracing against the armrests. Scarlett stepped back as Sherlock relocated himself with a neat jump, sitting on the backrest, dress shoes pressing into the seat and his elbows resting on his parted knees, elegant marble fingers laced together against his mouth.

"Okay…" John said slowly, absorbing the comment before taking the empty seat opposite Sherlock, sinking into the well-worn depths. "How did you get this?"

"By looking," Sherlock said succinctly.

"Where?"

"The killer must have driven her to Lauriston Gardens- he could only keep her case by accident if it was in the car," Sherlock explained. "Nobody could be seen with this case without drawing attention to themselves, particularly a man, which is statistically more likely, Scarlett."

"I maintain that it is a reasonable assumption based on available data, not a certainty," Scarlett allowed herself to say smoothly, ignoring John's bemused look.

Sherlock almost smirked. "Well, either way, the killer obviously felt compelled to get rid of it the moment he noticed he still had it- wouldn't have taken him more than five minutes to realise his mistake. Scarlett and I checked every backstreet wide enough for a car five minutes from Lauriston Gardens, and anywhere you could dispose of a bulky object without being observed."

"It took us about three quarters of an hour," Scarlett said, "but we found it. Not long, I suppose, relatively speaking."

" _Pink_ ," John repeated. "You got all _that_ because you realised that the case had to be pink?"

"Well, it had to be _pink_ , obviously." Sherlock said.

"Why didn't I think of that?" John muttered sarcastically.

"Because you're an idiot," Sherlock stated offhandedly. John's head shot up, and Sherlock waved a hand glibly. "No, no, no, don't be like that, practically everyone is."

"Some would say your standards are skewed," Scarlett commented dryly. She met her cousin's gaze and John gave her a disbelieving look- but underneath it, Scarlett sensed the strong undercurrent of interest that was keeping John in the flat.

John was too much like her: too stubborn to refuse a challenge.

"Well, the two of you aren't doing too terribly by comparison," Sherlock conceded thoughtfully, before tilting his clasped hands forwards, pointing at the case with his index fingers, cocked like a gun. "Now look. Do you see what's missing?"

"From the case? How could I?" John said flatly.

Sherlock's eyes lit up, genuinely enjoying himself, as though he had finally found someone clever enough to play his favourite game with. "Her _phone_. Where's her mobile phone? There was no phone on the body, there was no phone in the case, we know that she had one- that's her number there you've just texted."

"Maybe she left it at home," John suggested.

"Unlikely, John," Scarlett demurred as Sherlock seated himself properly again. "Like most attached adulterers, she was probably careful enough not to get caught. She would keep her phone close out of sheer paranoia."

"Well, then-" John's eyebrows contracted. "Why did I just send that text?"

Scarlett expected Sherlock to explain his thinking in a storm of deductions. Instead, he paused deliberately. "Well, the question is, _where is her phone now_?"

"She could have lost it."

"Yes," Sherlock conceded, " _or_ …"

The pieces snapping into place behind John's eyes were almost audible. "The murderer- you think the _murderer_ has her phone?"

"Maybe she left it when she left her case," Sherlock continued, and Scarlett suddenly began to recognise the subtle coaxing, his tugging at John's intellect to think alongside him. "Maybe he took it from her for some reason. Either way- the balance of probability is the murderer has her phone-"

"Sorry," John half-interrupted, realisation dawning. "What are we doing- did I just text a _murderer_? What good will that do?"

The soft trill of a ringtone cut across him. John and Scarlett stared down at John's phone, lit up with a blank caller identification screen, the number withheld. Sherlock watched triumphantly.

"A few hours after his last victim, and now he receives a text that can only be from her," Sherlock said lowly, irises glinting, elated, from underneath his lashes. "If somebody had just found that phone, they would just ignore a text like that. But the murderer…"

John's phone fell ominously silent.

"Would _panic_ ," Sherlock concluded, snapping the case shut and rising to his feet abruptly, snatching his blazer up from the back of his desk chair and slipping it on.

John's surprise thawed after a moment. "Have you told the police?" He asked urgently, tucking his phone into his pocket.

"Four people are dead," Sherlock said briskly, buttoning his blazer and adjusting it over his shoulders with a raised eyebrow. "There isn't time to call the police."

"Then why are you talking to Scarlett and me?!" John asked incredulously.

Sherlock glanced mournfully at the void on the mantle. "Mrs Hudson took my skull."

"So we're filling in for you skull," Scarlett stated, unimpressed.

"Relax, you're both doing fine," he assured them, plucking his coat from the hook of the back of the front door and donning it with a single swoop of dark fabric. "Well?"

"Well _what_?" John said, exasperated.

"Well- you could stay here, watch _telly_ ," Sherlock said with tangible derision, straightening his collar, turned up against his throat.

"What, you want us to come with you?"

"I like company when I go out, and I think better when I talk aloud," Sherlock said conversationally, unravelling his cashmere scarf. "The skull just attracts attention."

Scarlett watch John smile inexorably at that.

"Problem?" Sherlock asked with a wry smirk.

"Yeah- Sergeant Donovan."

Sherlock's good mood dulled instantly. "What about her?"

"She said," John replied simply, testing something, "you get off on this. You enjoy this."

Sherlock laughed softly, the look he gave John telling him that they were both enjoying this just as much as he was. "And I said _dangerous_ , and here you are." His eyes flashed in Scarlett's direction. "And as for Scarlett- I hardly need to say it, do I?"

It was a clever little taunt- the verbal insinuation of the gesture of an index finger, crooked in sly invitation, crafted magnetism and a sliver of seduction all wrapped up together like gleaming gift. Scarlett was by no means weak, but a part of her not only saw the pragmatic benefit in succumbing to the call, but _wanted_ to. _Come and play with me,_ she could practically hear his voice beckoning wickedly. _I can promise that you'll never be bored again._

Sherlock turned and exited swiftly, and Scarlett was left feeling oddly lightheaded. _You just_ had _to bump into Mike Stamford in the park, John,_ she wanted to rail at him furiously. _You just_ had _to meet Sherlock Holmes and become fascinated with him to the point where you'd consider sharing living space with him and therefore make me need to meet him. And_ then _he just_ had _to turn out to be a genius, gorgeous, consulting detective with a complete lack of regard for social etiquette._

She rose sharply, resolved, and picked up her jacket, pulling it on and flicking her long blonde hair out from where it was trapped between her body and coat with a sweep of her arm.

"You're not _going_ are you?" Her cousin inquired incredulously.

"Get up, John," Scarlett said plainly, slipping her phone into her pocket.

For a moment, John simply stared at her as though she had completely lost her mind, watching her button her jacket and comb her hair out with her fingers.

Then he was grappling with his cane, shoving himself to his feet with a scowl that didn't reach his eyes.

" _Damn it._ "

Scarlett smiled at him brilliantly, and they walked out over the flat's threshold- a first, conscious, and irreversible step forwards.


End file.
